A year after launching her online boutique, Ruth Lopardo doubled her business selling colorful kids’ clothing. She graduated the business from a spare room in her home in northern England to an office, too, but her success triggered a funding crunch familiar to many fashion retailers: The money she needed to quickly restock popular items was tied up in investing in new merchandise for the upcoming season.

This past weekend, hackers joined us at the stunning innovation space H-Farm in Treviso, on the outskirts of Venice, to take part in our first BattleHack in Italy. H-Farm, home to over 400 budding start-ups, is widely recognized as the largest incubator and accelerator in Italy.

Hackers from all over Europe joined us for BattleHack Venice and developed some interesting and creative apps. I was joined by Mario Viviani- CEO of Mariux Apps , Luigi Giglio - Co-Founder & CTO of AppsBuilder, and H-Farm Co-Founder and CEO Riccardo Donadon to judge the hacks. We had some tough decisions to make!

The past few months have seen tremendous activity as we work to complete the final steps toward separation from eBay and prepare to become an independent, publicly traded company on Monday. Despite all the distractions, it’s clear from our most recent financial results that the team has stayed focused on our customers and has been executing at a very high level.

Sir Richard Branson once said, “Entrepreneurs make the world a better place” and I couldn’t agree more. At PayPal, we see everyday how small businesses can thrive by having that entrepreneurial spirit and a great idea. That’s why we are proud sponsors of Shopify’s “Build A Business” contest (for the second year) to support entrepreneurs who are looking to get their businesses off the ground. I also couldn’t be happier to share that half of the six winners used PayPal to make their “Entrepreneur Island” experience come true.

If you’re like many small businesses, your customers are probably at backyard barbeques this summer and not necessarily shopping online. You can take advantage of this time to ready your business for fall sales, as well as the upcoming holiday season. Below are some tips to help make sure you’re prepared when shoppers arrive at your virtual storefront.

At PayPal, our goal is to build trust between buyers and sellers to enable millions of transactions around the world. As part of this, we support entrepreneurs and small businesses, and allow them access to cutting edge tools. One of the benefits of using PayPal is that nearly anyone can sign-up for an account and start accepting payments in seconds. We are also one of the few payments companies to have customized our policy and processes to specifically support crowdfunding.

There has never been a more exciting time to be in payments. Mobile technology is creating an unprecedented opportunity to completely reimagine how money works and how it moves around the world. As the world’s open technology payments platform, PayPal is leading the innovation that is disrupting and reinventing payments. We processed 1 billion mobile payments for people in 2014, giving them simpler and safer ways to manage and move their money with the technology they love to use.

Entry into $600 Billion International Money Transfer Market with Leading Technology Solution

Expands Services for PayPal’s Customers and Accelerates Time-to-Market in Key International Markets

SAN JOSE, Calif. & SAN FRANCISCO – JULY 1, 2015 – PayPal, Inc. and Xoom Corporation (NASDAQ:XOOM), a digital money transfer provider, today announced a definitive agreement under which PayPal will acquire Xoom for $25 per share in cash or an approximate $890 million enterprise value. The transaction represents a premium of 32% over Xoom’s three-month volume-weighted average price and was unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies, as well as the Board of eBay Inc., PayPal’s parent company.

PayPal is extending its Buyer Protection program that it offers for purchases of physical products to intangible goods and services, including digital goods, digital music, digital books, digital games, travel tickets and software downloads, as the global market for such items is rapidly climbing into the tens of billions of dollars.

This past weekend, BattleHack returned to the Windy City & Braintree’s hometown for a second consecutive year. With 33 teams competing fiercely for the axe and the chance to win a place in the World Finals to compete for $100,000, we knew the hackers wouldn’t disappoint us in Chicago.

We once again returned to 1871, a state-of-the-art collaborative space in the historic Merchandise Mart building, overlooking the Chicago River. With pour over coffee from Modest Coffee, Portillo’s hot dogs, Saucy Porka’s Bacos (Bao+Tacos), deep dish pizza and on demand massages, the hackers crunched through 24-hours to bring their code to life