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Commitments and Contingencies
6 Months Ended
Jun. 30, 2018
Commitments and Contingencies Disclosure [Abstract]  
Commitments and Contingencies
Commitments and Contingencies

Commitments

As of June 30, 2018 and December 31, 2017, approximately $27.7 billion and $26.4 billion, respectively, of unused credit was available to PayPal Credit account holders. While this amount represents the total unused credit available, we have not experienced, and do not anticipate, that all of our PayPal Credit account holders will access their entire available credit at any given point in time. In addition, the individual lines of credit that make up this unused credit are subject to periodic review and termination by the chartered financial institution that is the issuer of PayPal Credit products based on, among other things, account usage and customer creditworthiness. When a consumer funds a purchase in the U.S. using a PayPal Credit product issued by a chartered financial institution, the chartered financial institution extends credit to the consumer, funds the extension of credit at the point of sale and advances funds to the merchant. We subsequently purchase the receivables related to the consumer loans extended by the chartered financial institution and, as a result of such purchase, bear the risk of loss in the event of loan defaults. Although the chartered financial institution continues to own each customer account, we own the related receivable (excluding participation interests sold) and are responsible for all servicing functions related to the account.

Litigation and Regulatory Matters

Overview

We are involved in legal and regulatory proceedings on an ongoing basis. Many of these proceedings are in early stages, and may seek an indeterminate amount of damages. If we believe that a loss arising from such matters is probable and can be reasonably estimated, we accrue the estimated liability in our financial statements. If only a range of estimated losses can be determined, we accrue an amount within the range that, in our judgment, reflects the most likely outcome; if none of the estimates within that range is a better estimate than any other amount, we accrue the low end of the range. For those proceedings in which an unfavorable outcome is reasonably possible but not probable, we have disclosed an estimate of the reasonably possible loss or range of losses or we have concluded that an estimate of the reasonably possible loss or range of losses arising directly from the proceeding (i.e., monetary damages or amounts paid in judgment or settlement) are not material. If we cannot estimate the probable or reasonably possible loss or range of losses arising from a legal proceeding, we have disclosed that fact. In assessing the materiality of a legal proceeding, we evaluate, among other factors, the amount of monetary damages claimed, as well as the potential impact of non-monetary remedies sought by plaintiffs (e.g., injunctive relief) that may require us to change our business practices in a manner that could have a material adverse impact on our business. With respect to the matters disclosed in this Note 13, we are unable to estimate the possible loss or range of losses that could potentially result from the application of such non-monetary remedies.

Amounts accrued for legal and regulatory proceedings for which we believe a loss is probable were not material for the six months ended June 30, 2018. Except as otherwise noted for the proceedings described in this Note 13, we have concluded, based on currently available information, that reasonably possible losses arising directly from the proceedings (i.e., monetary damages or amounts paid in judgment or settlement) in excess of our recorded accruals are also not material. However, legal and regulatory proceedings are inherently unpredictable and subject to significant uncertainties. If one or more matters were resolved against us in a reporting period for amounts in excess of management’s expectations, the impact on our operating results or financial condition for that reporting period could be material.

Regulatory Proceedings

We are required to comply with U.S. economic and trade sanctions administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”). We have self-reported to OFAC certain transactions that were inadvertently processed but subsequently identified as possible violations of U.S. economic and trade sanctions. In March 2015, we reached a settlement with OFAC regarding possible violations arising from our sanctions compliance practices between 2009 and 2013, prior to the implementation of our real-time transaction scanning program. Subsequently, we have self-reported additional transactions as possible violations, and we have received new subpoenas from OFAC seeking additional information about certain of these transactions. Such self-reported transactions could result in claims or actions against us, including litigation, injunctions, damage awards, fines or penalties, or require us to change our business practices in a manner that could result in a material loss, require significant management time, result in the diversion of significant operational resources or otherwise harm our business.

On March 28, 2016, we received a Civil Investigative Demand (“CID”) from the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) as part of its investigation to determine whether we, through our Venmo service, have been or are engaged in deceptive or unfair practices in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act. The CID requested the production of documents and answers to written questions related to our Venmo service. We have cooperated with the FTC in connection with the CID. On February 27, 2018, we entered into a Consent Order with the FTC in which we settled potential allegations arising from our Venmo services between 2013 and 2017. The Consent Order does not contain a monetary penalty, but requires PayPal to make various changes to Venmo’s disclosures and business practices. The FTC approved the final Consent Order on May 24, 2018. As required by the Consent Order, we are cooperating with the FTC’s requirements and working to ensure compliance with the Consent Order. Any failure to comply with the Consent Order may increase the possibility of additional adverse consequences, including litigation, additional regulatory actions, injunctions, or monetary penalties, or require further changes to our business practices, significant management time, or the diversion of significant operational resources, all of which could result in a material loss or otherwise harm our business.

Legal Proceedings

On January 12, 2017, a putative shareholder derivative action captioned Silverman v. Schulman, et al., Case No. 5:17-cv-00162 (the “California Derivative Case”) was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (the "Court"). On March 24, 2017, a second derivative action substantially similar to the California Derivative Case captioned Seeman v. Schulman, et al., Case No. 1:17-cv-00318-UNA, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (the “Delaware Derivative Case”). On April 19, 2017, the Delaware court in the Delaware Derivative Case issued an order adopting a stipulation filed by the parties transferring the Delaware Derivative Case to the Court so that the Delaware Derivative Case could be consolidated with the pending California Derivative Case. On April 27 and 28, 2017, two additional shareholder derivative lawsuits substantially similar to the California Derivative Case and Delaware Derivative Case were filed in the Court. These cases are captioned Sims v. Schulman, et al., Case No. 1:17-cv-02428, and Liss v. Schulman, et al., Case No. 1:17-cv-02446-NC (together with the California Derivative Case and the Delaware Derivative Case, the “Derivative Cases”). The Derivative Cases are purportedly brought on behalf of the Company and assert claims relating to our disclosure in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended March 31, 2016, that on March 28, 2016, we received a CID from the FTC as part of its investigation to determine whether we, through our Venmo service, have been or are engaged in deceptive or unfair practices in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act. The Derivative Cases allege that the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, former interim Chief Financial Officer, and certain members of its Board of Directors breached their fiduciary duties to the Company, violated Section 14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and were unjustly enriched by, among other things, causing or permitting the Company to issue materially false and misleading statements or omissions regarding the Company’s compliance with applicable laws and regulations with respect to its Venmo service, and/or by permitting or causing the Company to engage in unfair trade practices through its Venmo service. The Derivative Cases seek, among other things, to recover unspecified compensatory damages on behalf of the Company arising out of the individual defendants’ alleged wrongful conduct. Although plaintiffs in the Derivative Cases do not seek relief against the Company, we have certain indemnification obligations to the individual defendants. On June 30, 2017, the Court issued an order approving a stipulation filed by the parties in the Derivative Cases that consolidates these cases and appoints co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel for the consolidated case, captioned In re PayPal Holdings, Inc. Shareholder Derivative Litigation, Lead Case No. 5:17-cv-00162-RS (the “Consolidated Derivative Case”). The Court’s order states that it applies to each purported derivative action that is subsequently filed in, removed to, or transferred to the Court, arising out of the same or substantially the same transactions or events as the Derivative Cases. On July 31, 2017, plaintiffs’ counsel designated the complaint filed in the Liss action as the operative complaint for the Consolidated Derivative Case. On October 5, 2017, another putative shareholder derivative suit was filed in the Court captioned Iron Workers Local No. 25 Pension Fund v. John J. Donahoe, et al., Case No. 5:17-cv-05741-NC, that makes similar allegations and advances similar claims against the same defendants as those at issue in the Consolidated Derivative Case. Pursuant to the Court’s consolidation order, this shareholder derivative suit is part of the Consolidated Derivative Case. On September 28, 2017, we filed a motion to dismiss the operative complaint on grounds that plaintiffs lack standing to pursue claims on behalf of the Company because they did not make a pre-suit demand on the Company’s Board of Directors prior to filing the Derivative Cases and failed to establish that making such a demand would have been futile. On January 18, 2018, the Court granted our motion to dismiss with leave to amend and gave plaintiffs 30 days from that date to file an amended complaint. On February 16, 2018, plaintiffs in the Consolidated Derivative Case filed an amended complaint. Plaintiffs’ counsel also sent a letter dated February 15, 2018 to counsel for the defendants that purports to be a litigation demand on the Company's Board of Directors. In April 2018, defendants in the Consolidated Derivative Case entered into a tolling agreement that tolls the running of any statute of limitations applicable to the claims at issue in the lawsuit and the litigation demand plaintiffs sent to the Company's Board of Directors until 30 days from the time the Board issues a final response to the demand or three years elapse from the date of the tolling agreement, whichever comes first. Pursuant to the agreement, plaintiffs in the Consolidated Derivative Case have agreed to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit without prejudice.

We have received subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) seeking the production of certain information related to our historical anti-money laundering program. We are cooperating with the DOJ in providing information in response to the subpoenas. We are unable to predict the outcome of the government's investigation.

In November 2017, we announced that we had suspended the operations of TIO Networks (“TIO”) as part of an ongoing investigation of security vulnerabilities of the TIO platform. On December 1, 2017, we announced that we had identified evidence of unauthorized access to TIO’s network, including locations that stored personal information of some of TIO’s customers and customers of TIO billers and the potential compromise of personally identifiable information for approximately 1.6 million customers. We have received a number of governmental inquiries, including from state attorneys general, and we may be subject to additional governmental inquiries and investigations in the future. In addition, on December 6, 2017, a putative class action lawsuit captioned Sgarlata v. PayPal Holdings, Inc., et al., Case No. 3:17-cv-06956 was filed in the Court against the Company, its Chief Executive Officer, its Chief Financial Officer and Hamed Shahbazi, the former chief executive officer of TIO (the “Defendants”) alleging violations of federal securities laws. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that Defendants made false or misleading statements or failed to disclose that TIO’s data security program was inadequate to safeguard the personally identifiable information of its users, those vulnerabilities threatened continued operation of TIO’s platform, the Company’s revenues derived from TIO services were thus unsustainable, and consequently, the Company overstated the benefits of the TIO acquisition, and, as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. The plaintiff who initiated the lawsuit sought to represent a class of shareholders who acquired shares of the Company’s common stock between February 14, 2017 through December 1, 2017 and sought damages and attorneys’ fees, among other relief. On March 16, 2018, the Court appointed two new plaintiffs, not the original plaintiff who filed the case, as interim co-lead plaintiffs in the case and appointed two law firms as interim co-lead counsel. Pursuant to stipulations entered into by the parties to the case, the Court issued orders on March 30 and April 6, 2018 providing for the publication by interim co-lead counsel of an amended notice under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act given the anticipated amendment of the complaint to include an amended class definition that includes individuals who purchased options to purchase our common stock between February 14, 2017 through December 1, 2017, the filing of an amended complaint by co-lead plaintiffs within seventy-five days of the March 30, 2018 order, and a briefing schedule on the Defendants’ anticipated motions to dismiss the amended complaint. On June 13, 2018, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint, which named TIO Networks ULC, TIO Networks USA, Inc., and John Kunze (the Company’s Vice President, Global Consumer Products and Xoom) as additional defendants. The amended complaint is purportedly brought on behalf of all persons other than the Defendants who acquired the Company’s securities between November 10, 2017 and December 1, 2017. The amended complaint alleges that the Company’s and TIO’s November 10, 2017 announcement of the suspension of TIO’s operations was false and misleading because the announcement only disclosed security vulnerabilities on TIO’s platform, rather than an actual security breach that Defendants were allegedly aware of at the time of the announcement. Defendants’ filed their motion to dismiss the amended complaint on July 13, 2018. We may be subject to additional litigation relating to TIO’s data security platform or the suspension of TIO’s operations in the future.

General Matters
Other third parties have from time to time claimed, and others may claim in the future, that we have infringed their intellectual property rights. We are subject to patent disputes, and expect that we will increasingly be subject to additional patent infringement claims involving various aspects of our business as our products and services continue to expand in scope and complexity. Such claims may be brought directly or indirectly against our companies and/or against our customers (who may be entitled to contractual indemnification under their contracts with us), and we are subject to increased exposure to such claims as a result of our acquisitions, particularly in cases where we are entering into new lines of business in connection with such acquisitions. We have in the past been forced to litigate such claims, and we believe that additional lawsuits alleging such claims will be filed against us. Intellectual property claims, whether meritorious or not, are time consuming and costly to defend and resolve, could require expensive changes in our methods of doing business or could require us to enter into costly royalty or licensing agreements on unfavorable terms or make substantial payments to settle claims or to satisfy damages awarded by courts.
From time to time, we are involved in other disputes or regulatory inquiries that arise in the ordinary course of business, including suits by our customers (individually or as class actions) alleging, among other things, improper disclosure of our prices, rules or policies, that our practices, prices, rules, policies or customer/user agreements violate applicable law or that we have acted unfairly and/or not acted in conformity with such prices, rules, policies or agreements. In addition to these types of disputes and regulatory inquiries, our operations are also subject to regulatory and/or legal review and/or challenges that tend to reflect the increasing global regulatory focus to which the payments industry is subject and, when taken as a whole with other regulatory and legislative action, such actions could result in the imposition of costly new compliance burdens on our business and customers and may lead to increased costs and decreased transaction volume and revenue. Further, the number and significance of these disputes and inquiries are increasing as we have grown larger, our business has expanded in scope (both in terms of the range of products and services that we offer and our geographical operations) and our products and services have increased in complexity. Any claims or regulatory actions against us, whether meritorious or not, could be time consuming, result in costly litigation, settlement payments, damage awards (including statutory damages for certain causes of action in certain jurisdictions), fines, penalties, injunctive relief or increased costs of doing business through adverse judgment or settlement, require us to change our business practices in expensive ways, require significant amounts of management time, result in the diversion of significant operational resources or otherwise harm our business.

Indemnification Provisions
We entered into a separation and distribution agreement, a tax matters agreement, an operating agreement and various other agreements with eBay Inc. ("eBay") to govern the separation of the two companies in 2015 and the relationship of the two companies going forward. These agreements provide for specific indemnity and liability obligations and disputes that have arisen (and may arise) between us and eBay from time to time, which may be significant. In addition, the indemnity rights we have against eBay under the agreements may not be sufficient to protect us, and our indemnity obligations to eBay may be significant.
In the ordinary course of business, we include limited indemnification provisions in certain of our agreements with parties with whom we have commercial relationships, including our standard marketing, promotions, and application-programming-interface license (API) agreements. Under these contracts, we generally indemnify, hold harmless, and agree to reimburse the indemnified party for losses suffered or incurred by the indemnified party in connection with claims by any third party with respect to our domain names, trademarks, logos, and other branding elements to the extent that such marks are related to the subject agreement. In a limited number of agreements, we have provided an indemnity for other types of third-party claims, which are indemnities mainly related to intellectual property rights. We have also provided an indemnity to our payments processors in the event of certain third-party claims or card association fines against the processor arising out of conduct by us or our customers. It is not possible to determine the maximum potential loss under these indemnification provisions due to our limited history of prior indemnification claims and the unique facts and circumstances involved in each particular situation. To date, no significant costs have been incurred, either individually or collectively, in connection with our indemnification provisions.

Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements

As of June 30, 2018 and December 31, 2017, we had no off-balance sheet arrangements that have, or are reasonably likely to have, a current or future material effect on our consolidated financial condition, results of operations, liquidity, capital expenditures or capital resources.

Protection Programs

We provide merchants and consumers with protection programs on substantially all transactions completed through our Payments Platform, except for transactions using our gateway products. These programs protect both merchants and consumers from loss primarily due to fraud and counterparty performance. Our Buyer Protection Program provides protection to consumers for qualifying purchases by reimbursing the consumer for the full amount of the purchase if a purchased item does not arrive or does not match the seller’s description. Our Seller Protection Programs provide protection to merchants against claims that a transaction was not authorized by the buyer or claims that an item was not received by covering the seller for the full amount of the payment on eligible sales. These protection programs are considered standard service warranties for which we estimate and record associated costs in transaction and loan losses during the period the payment transaction is processed.

The maximum potential exposure under our protection programs is estimated to be the portion of total eligible transaction volume (TPV) for which buyer or seller protection claims may be raised under our existing user agreements. Since eligible transactions are typically completed in a period significantly shorter than the period under which disputes may be opened, and based on our historical losses to date, we do not believe that the maximum potential exposure is representative of our actual potential exposure. The actual amount of potential exposure cannot be quantified as we are unable to determine total eligible transactions where performance by a merchant or customer is incomplete or completed transactions that may result in a claim under our protection programs. We record a liability with respect to losses under these protection programs when they are probable and the amount can be reasonably estimated. The following table shows changes in the allowance for transaction losses and negative customer balances related to our protection programs for the three and six months ended June 30, 2018 and 2017:
 
Three Months Ended June 30,
 
Six Months Ended June 30,
 
2018
 
2017
 
2018
 
2017
 
(In millions)
Beginning balance
$
283

 
$
213

 
$
266

 
$
222

Provisions, net of recoveries
262

 
185

 
505

 
356

Realized losses
(241
)
 
(175
)
 
(467
)
 
(355
)
Ending balance
$
304

 
$
223

 
$
304

 
$
223