PayPal and eBay are finally splitting sometime in the next few months.

It brings an end to what could have been the greatest payments service in the world, entrapped in the snare of a failing auction house rapidly losing value due to sites like Amazon and Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall.

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Even PayPal co-founder Elon Musk vented frustration about how PayPal could have been the world's online bank, but eBay shut all of these opportunities down to keep the payments service only on eBay.

PayPal is still a major player in the industry but with services like Apple Pay picking up steam and Google planning a huge revamp of Wallet, time might be running out for the recently divorced service to make a big step.

Interestingly, part of the deal forces PayPal to not create an online marketplace and eBay can't build its own payments service for the first five years. eBay will also remain PayPal's largest customer until it finds new opportunities.

Several analysts project that if PayPal can offer major payments infrastructure in the next few years, it will push past eBay's valuation. That might be an issue if eBay wasn't keeping a minority share of PayPal and several eBay members, including co-founder Pierre Omidyar, sitting on PayPal's board of directors.

Hopefully, even with eBay lurking over PayPal's shoulder, the payments service will start to work on more adventurous programs and systems for consumers and businesses. PayPal is in a unique spot where millions have an account, but the lack of options for saving, taking out loans, and making investments has created a lot of inactive accounts.

The major problem right now is PayPal isn't as good as a bank account. You can't gain interest, take out loans, pay for fundamentals like a mobile contract or gas through PayPal. It needs to create programs that a common bank will offer from day one, keeping all of the money and interest on PayPal.

It may be hard due to regulations in certain countries, but if PayPal can make its mark it may become the first global, private and online-only bank in the world. That alone is much more than eBay can ever hope to achieve with its auction house front.

TagsPayPal, eBay, Amazon, e-commerce, Payments Service