PayPal came back online for many users Tuesday afternoon after a major outage struck the online payment service late last week. eBay, which owns the PayPal service, posted an updated announcement about the problem Tuesday morning, reading in part, "these PayPal issues are the result of unforeseen problems that resulted when a new code base to upgrade the site architecture was introduced to the PayPal platform on Friday morning. The code worked well when tested and during the first hours of launch. Unfortunately, problems handling peak levels of traffic developed later in the day that created intermittent availability and errors for members. These problems have continued in varying degrees since Friday. Account data and personal information have not been compromised by these issues. eBay and PayPal technical teams are working at full force to fix the underlying problems and improve site access."

eBay updated the announcement at 7:19 pm, cautiously reporting good news: "We have made good progress in our efforts to restore the PayPal site functionality. The PayPal site performed well during peak traffic levels this evening, and the overall member experience has improved significantly. Most members are now able to log in to the PayPal site to access account information, use shipping functions, use PayPal debit cards, and pay for items online with no difficulty. Should you encounter any errors when attempting to log in or use different PayPal functions, please try again."

The outage left many users stunned, and pointed out the dependency many eBay sellers and small ecommerce sites have on PayPal and its ecommerce shopping cart system. Assuming the PayPal site remains stable, eBay and PayPal will likely be doing damage control this week to explain to users what went wrong and why it won't happen again. Right now, it's not certain PayPal knows what went wrong.