Facebook Inc Hires Another PayPal Exec For Messenger Team

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Facebook Inc Messenger team has stolen yet another executive from PayPal. David Marcus, President of PayPal, was hired by Facebook just six months ago to handle the company’s messaging products, and on Wednesday, the company announced the hiring of Stan Chudnovsky, PayPal’s VP of Growth, says a report from Re/code.

Is Facebook adding payments to messenger?

A spokesperson from Facebook stated that Chudnovsky will report directly to Marcus and be responsible for handling product management for Messenger. It is a general belief that Facebook is planning to add payments to its Messenger app, and with the joining of yet another PayPal executive, the speculation has got even more weight. Initially, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and its VP of growth, Javier Olivan, recruited Chudnovsky to work on the growth team, but later he was moved to Messenger. Chudnovsky will start working in early February.

Facebook has made mobile messaging an important part of its business. The company not only acquired WhatsApp in a deal worth $17 billion but also forced people to download the standalone messaging app.

Not much experience in payments

Chudnovsky, who does not have any experience in payments, worked at PayPal for one-and-a-half years. In fact, he had always worked at gaming and social media companies before that. This experience helps him in attracting new users and customers for the company.

Iron Pearl is a start-up by him, according to his PayPal bio. The start-up helped other companies optimize growth and improve customer retention. Around 18 months ago, eBay acquired Iron Pearl, and at that time, Chudnovsky joined PayPal. Apart from Iron Pearl, Chudnovsky also co-founded game developers Ooga Labs and Wonderhill and has also worked with Monster and Tickle, which in 2004 was acquired by Monster.

PayPal gained 34 million active users under Chudnovsky, and in terms of sales growth, it outpaced eBay’s marketplace business continuously. In the third quarter, a growth of 20% was noticed in PayPal sales, compared to eBay’s core marketplace gain of 6% for the same period.

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