LA VISTA, Nebraska: Row after row of industrial gray cubicles make the inside of PayPal's two cavernous operations buildings in this Omaha suburb look a bit like any other office or call center.
But the balloon clusters floating above the desks of top performers, an outdoor basketball court and the conference rooms named after comic book heroes such as Green Lantern suggest there is more to the place, which houses the heart of eBay Inc.'s lucrative division.
More than 2,000 of PayPal's nearly 7,000 employees worldwide work at the company's La Vista complex providing customer support, fraud protection and resolving customer problems in more than a dozen languages. And PayPal plans to hire around 600 more this year. The La Vista center also oversees two smaller operations centers — in Dublin, Ireland, and Shanghai, China — that help handle payments worldwide.
PayPal generated $439 million (€326 million) of eBay's $1.77 billion (€1.31 billion) revenue in the last quarter by charging fees to deliver what amount to electronic money orders that complete online transactions for individuals and businesses.
PayPal had 143 million accounts in March and expects to keep growing. Glenda Miller, the vice president of operations, doesn't expect that trend to change even if Google Inc.'s year-old Checkout payment service becomes a stronger competitor.
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"We're in the online payment business, so as e-commerce grows, we're going to grow," Miller said.
PayPal handled 177 million transactions worth $11.36 billion (€8.44 billion) during the first quarter. That works out to about $64.18 (€47.68) per transaction.
PayPal makes its money by charging 30 cents for every transaction plus up to 4.9 percent of the payment amount.
Analysts who follow PayPal agree its prospects seem
