A recent monthly update to its Web site caused no end of trouble for online transaction company PayPal

A recent monthly update to its Web site caused no end of trouble for online transaction company PayPal. But after an outage that plagued the site, PayPal appears to be back online. According to a notice by eBay (Quote, Chart), which owns the PayPal service, the introduction of back-end code Friday morning to upgrade the site's architecture caused the Web site to crash, though not initially. "The code worked well when tested and during the first hours of launch," a notice on the site said. "Unfortunately, problems handling peak levels of traffic developed later in the day that created intermittent availability and errors for members." As of press time, access to the PayPal site appeared to be restored. "We have made good progress in our efforts to restore the PayPal site functionality," a note on the PayPal site said Tuesday. "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." Officials said they have no way of knowing how many transactions were lost since the code change. While some customers have been able to get online and conduct business, others haven't been so lucky. Tuesday afternoon, access to the Web site was intermittent. Sara Bettencourt, a PayPal spokesperson, said it was unclear how much had been lost in the meantime.