Earlier today, The Information reported that eBay has been interviewing external candidates for the top job at PayPal, which was vacated in June when David Marcus left to be the head of Facebook Messenger. However, PayPal employees are pushing for Bill Ready, the current CEO of Braintree, to become the president at PayPal, according to numerous sources who spoke to Bank Innovation. These sources requested anonymity due to existing ties to the company.
PayPal declined to comment for this article.
“Both me and other people in the company are shocked that Bill Ready hasn’t been named [president of PayPal] yet,” an employee told Bank Innovation. “The fact that they haven’t named Bill president yet leads me to think that they’re going to look elsewhere,” the employee added.
That being said, industry insiders say that there might not be enough interest from Ready or eBay, especially if eBay is hoping to spin off PayPal in the next year, as The Information reported. “I heard that he doesn’t want to move to San Francisco,” an industry source said. “His family’s in Chicago and he loves the city.”
Moving Ready to head up PayPal might not be the best move in the long term, sources indicate. Ready is more of a “product guy, similar to Marcus,” a source said. With activist investors like Carl Icahn circling, it makes sense that eBay is looking for a strong leader with business acumen.
It should be noted that those hoping Ready takes Marcus’ old job were also big fans of Marcus, even though he wasn’t a “business guy.”
Internally, employees in subsidiaries Braintree and Venmo, have been advocating for a regime change in PayPal. “With Marcus gone, we’re hoping that the Braintree/Venmo team can move into the higher ranks of PayPal,” an employee told Bank Innovation.
Employees have also been highly critical of different divisions within PayPal, namely the sales team, which has been slow to find partners, according to sources. “Compared to other (payments companies), PayPal’s sales team is piss poor.” For such a large payments company, our source said, PayPal “should have a lot more partnerships.”
David Marcus also apparently once said in a meeting that PayPal had just five good developers.
Though the company has been pushing out innovative new products, PayPal’s executive team has been in shambles over the past year, losing a number of high profile leaders. Stability at the top could help PayPal could ease concerns from their employees and investors.