David Marcus, who runs the PayPal online payments service for eBay, is moving to Facebook to become head of its messaging products.
He has been at PayPal for three years, coming to eBay after it bought his payments startup, Zong.
This is a very big Silicon Valley poach by Facebook, which came after several discussions between Marcus and CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. It’s also a clear indication — especially given Marcus’s payments background — that the company intends to begin to monetize its messaging products.
John Donahoe, CEO of eBay, confirmed the departure in a very gallant post that read, in part: “As the head of PayPal for the past two years, David reinvigorated product design to deliver compelling consumer experiences and energized the team to make a great business better. An entrepreneur at heart, David has made a career decision to focus on what he loves most — leading smaller teams to create great product experiences.”
There has been speculation, for example, that users would eventually be able to attach digital cash to Facebook messages. But the company could use its popular messaging product in a number of different ways.
The social network said it now processes 12 billion messages on its Facebook Messenger daily. It has 200 million monthly active users of its app, which can be used separately from the network, but is also deeply integrated within it.
In his new job, Marcus will not have purview over WhatsApp, the global messaging product that Facebook recently bought for over $19 billion. That will be run independently.
Marcus posted on Facebook about the move.
Read more on this story at recode.net.
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