Since before. PayPal's forerunners were founded in '98 and' 99. I used micro payments in '93-'94. PayPal was notable for being one of the first new payment systems to get market penetration, but at the time at least it was not considered as micropayments at all, as all of the micropayments platforms of the time (and there were many) were looking at providing capability of paying amounts down to a cent or fractions of cents.