Registry · PYPL

Does PayPal support Israel?

PayPal Holdings, Inc.

Support documentedupdated 2026-09-26

Yes — PayPal has documented support for Israel on record. Every claim below links to its source.

Filed under: Banks & financial companies · Tech companies · Companies that support Israel

Background

Beyond its Israeli acquisitions and R&D center, PayPal is a documented case of differential service: it serves Israelis — including settlers in West Bank settlements — but does not offer its services to Palestinians with bank accounts in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian digital-rights group 7amleh has campaigned on this since 2016; in May 2023, eleven members of the US Congress wrote to PayPal urging it to end the 'discriminatory' exclusion, and a shareholder resolution asking the company to examine extending services to Palestinians failed after the board recommended voting against it. PayPal has not changed the policy and has not publicly explained it. The only documented giving on this page is small and dated: on Giving Tuesday 2016 PayPal added 1% of its own money to donations routed through its platform to four Israeli children's charities, reported by one Israeli outlet on the morning of the announcement and never followed up. No corporate donations to the Israeli government or military are documented.

Haaretz Arab News 7amleh campaign (advocacy, corroborated above) mako (Hebrew), 29 November 2016 — archived copy (the 2016 Giving Tuesday top-up)

Timeline of documented support

20072010201320162019202220252008-01 — Acquisition: Fraud Sciences Ltd. (Israeli fraud-detection company, Tel Aviv)Acquisition2008-012008 — Operations in Israel: PayPal Israel R&D center (Tel Aviv)Operations in Israel20082015-03 — Acquisition: CyActive (Israeli cybersecurity startup, Beersheba)Acquisition2015-032016-11 — Donation: Four Israeli nonprofits: Latet, Variety Israel, Larger than Life and Save a Child's HeartDonation2016-112021-03 — Acquisition: Curv (Israeli digital-asset security company, Tel Aviv)Acquisition2021-032026-01 — Acquisition: Cymbio (Israeli multi-channel commerce automation company, Tel Aviv)Acquisition2026-01

Documented support

TypeDateAmountRecipientSources
Acquisition2008-01$169,000,000Fraud Sciences Ltd. (Israeli fraud-detection company, Tel Aviv)
PayPal (then an eBay company) agreed on January 28, 2008 to acquire the privately held Israeli online fraud-detection company Fraud Sciences for approximately $169 million in cash (eBay's 10-Q later recorded a final purchase price of about $153.6 million). The deal brought Fraud Sciences' Tel Aviv team into PayPal and became the foundation of PayPal's Israeli R&D operation.
Acquisition2015-03—CyActive (Israeli cybersecurity startup, Beersheba)
Acquired the Israeli predictive-malware-detection startup CyActive (price undisclosed; Israeli press reported an estimated $60 million) and announced it would open a new security operations center in Israel built around CyActive's Beersheba offices, citing access to Israel's cybersecurity talent.
Donation2016-11-29—Four Israeli nonprofits: Latet, Variety Israel, Larger than Life and Save a Child's Heart
For Giving Tuesday on 29 November 2016 PayPal added 1% of its own money to every donation made through its platform to four Israeli nonprofits — Latet, Variety Israel, Larger than Life and Save a Child's Heart. The Israeli outlet mako, which reported the announcement, said it was the first time PayPal's global Giving Tuesday initiative, then running in more than 70 countries, included Israeli charities; the company said it had chosen organisations creating opportunities for children that already used PayPal to collect donations. No total was disclosed, so the size of PayPal's own contribution is not known: the top-up was a fixed percentage of what customers gave, not a lump-sum grant. mako published this on the morning of Giving Tuesday itself, as an announcement of what PayPal said it would do; no later report confirms what was actually paid.
One source
Acquisition2021-03—Curv (Israeli digital-asset security company, Tel Aviv)
Agreed to acquire Tel Aviv-based cryptocurrency-custody security firm Curv (terms undisclosed; reported at roughly $200 million) to accelerate its digital-assets business; the Curv team joined PayPal's blockchain, crypto and digital currencies unit, anchoring that unit's Israeli presence.
Acquisition2026-01-22—Cymbio (Israeli multi-channel commerce automation company, Tel Aviv)
PayPal announced on 22 January 2026 that it had agreed to acquire Cymbio, the Tel Aviv-based multi-channel orchestration platform that connects brands to marketplaces and to AI shopping surfaces such as Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity; PayPal's own release adds that the acquisition completed on 5 February 2026 and that deal terms were not disclosed. Cymbio was founded by Roy Avidor, Mor Lavi and Gilad Zirkel — PayPal's release says 2015, where Geektime dates the founding to 2014 — employs about 40 people, most of them in Israel, and had raised about $28 million of its own before the deal; PayPal Ventures, PayPal's venture arm, had invested in Cymbio in March 2022 in an undisclosed amount. Cymbio's team and technology now run Store Sync, one of PayPal's agentic-commerce services.
Operations in Israel2008—PayPal Israel R&D center (Tel Aviv)
Has operated an Israeli development center since the 2008 Fraud Sciences acquisition — roughly 200-250 data scientists and engineers in Tel Aviv building PayPal's global fraud-detection and anti-money-laundering AI plus core product components (a Beersheba security site opened after the CyActive deal was later consolidated). Amid 2024 layoffs the company said 'Israel remains an important market for the company, and we will continue to invest here in the coming years.' Geektime put the Israeli development centre at about 300 people by 2026, and reported in September 2026 that PayPal was cutting about 70 of them as part of a global efficiency programme set to remove roughly 20% of its worldwide workforce and save about $1.5 billion a year; the company said the change was part of a previously announced multi-year transformation.

Frequently asked questions

Did PayPal donate money to Israel or Israeli causes?

We have no records of cash donations, but PayPal has documented support of other kinds (Acquisition, Donation, Operations in Israel). See the records on this page.

Where does this information come from?

Every record on this page links to its source — news reports, official company statements, tax filings, or government records. 18 distinct sources are cited for PayPal. Our methodology page explains the full verification process.

Sources & citations

Record last updated: 2026-09-26

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