Image Credit: Illustration by Eric Blattberg / VentureBeatPayPal announced it will be spinning off from parent company eBay in 2015. The departure marks a new road ahead for the payments giant — and just in time. Digital payments are heating up and PayPal is facing competition on all fronts. A number of smaller players have emerged to compete with PayPal as e-commerce payment processors, including Stripe, Dwolla, Balanced, and Braintree (which PayPal acquired last year).