15 sides of PayPal

  PayPal is far from just being a popular payment system; it is a global company that operates in 15 different countries. Different countries mean different languages; different languages mean different mentality and national specifics. Not so long ago the company had to face the fact that in order to continue growing and expanding the services, it had to resolve the issue of  localizing content without spending loads of time and money.

"PayPal realized five years ago that it had to solve this problem or that it would hinder the e-commerce payment company's ability to grow", says Matthew Mengerink, the company's vice president of core technologies. Now the problem is solved with the help of "polylingual simultaneous shipping" or "SimShip." PayPal re-architected its software code in order to synchronize automatic updates for 15 local versions of PayPal. 

"This is a big problem that's been around a long time," says Ron Rogowski, a principal analyst for Forrester Research who specializes in globalization issues. "For the most part, companies really do a poor job localizing content". For PayPal this undertaking turned into a complete success - its international business now is responsible for 44% of the company's revenue. "Companies would like to manage their translations better," Rogowski says, "to realize internal and external cost savings. But the real benefit is the potential for revenue growth, the ability to roll into markets quickly." It is obvious that handling about $1,806 of payment transactions instantly would not be possible without PayPal's re-architected code.