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EBay Inc. today plans to announce the opening of its PayPal online-payments platform to third-party developers. During a conference call with analysts yesterday to discuss the company's second-quarter earnings, John Donahoe, eBay president and CEO, said he expects PayPal to double in size by 2011. Opening its platform to developers will expand PayPal's presence around the world, he said. "You're going to see the beginnings of application innovation done by third-party developers that I think will be analogous to the iPhone," Donahoe said, adding he predicts PayPal will be pulled into "more and more (payment) situations" as opportunities to conduct PayPal transactions on mobile devices expand. For the second quarter ended June 30, eBay's PayPal online-payments unit generated $669.3 million in revenue, up 11.2% from $601.8 million during the same quarter a year earlier. EBay's total payment volume was $16.7 billion, up 12% from $14.9 billion, while the net number of payments increased 23% to 259.6 million from 210.9 million. Active registered EBay accounts reached 75.4 million on June 30, up 20.4% from 62.6 million a year ago. EBay reported net income of $327 million, down 28.9% from $460 million. Net revenue was down 4.6%, to $2.1 billion compared with $2.2 billion.
