Back in 1999, eight years before Apple’s first iPhone release, a Silicon Valley software startup named Confinity introduced what it called a new “killer app.” It was dubbed PayPal.com.
The service allowed the “beaming” of funds between users, with only an email address. “Beaming Money by Email is Web’s Next Killer App,” Confinity said in its press release pitch, describing the technology.
The money-by-email effort arose from an earlier Confinity concept to transfer funds using infrared beams. The company demonstrated its payment feat by transferring $3 million with Palm Pilot devices in a breakfast display dubbed “Beaming at Buck’s” in the summer of 1999 at Buck’s, a Woodside, California restaurant. Max Levchin, the startup’s co-founder, recounted the story several years later in a talk at Stanford University with his Confinity co-founder, Peter Thiel.