Facebook nabs PayPal president

Silicon Valley saw some drama late Monday when PayPal announced that president David Marcus was leaving to lead Facebook’s messaging products.

The split was amicable with eBay president and CEO John Donahoe wishing Marcus well at Facebook.

“As the head of PayPal, David helped make a great business better, reinvigorating product design and innovation and energizing the team to deliver compelling consumer experiences,” Donahoe said. “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. We wish him well. He leaves behind a strong leadership team, committed to not skipping a beat on executing our plans, scaling product innovation and driving global growth.”

Donahoe said the PayPal team will report to him until a new president is named.

“Leading PayPal has been one of the most amazing experiences of my career,” Marcus said. “I’m proud of what we’ve done together over the past two years, reinvigorating and accelerating product innovation and strengthening PayPal’s global leadership in mobile and digital payments. I believe PayPal is poised for long-term success in creating the future of money. And I know the business has a strong leadership team in place. That’s why now felt like the right time to make a change and return to how I most love to spend my time, leading smaller teams to build great product experiences.”

PayPal has more than 148 million active accounts and in 2013 processed $180 billion in payment volume, including $27 billion of mobile payments volume, and accounted for 41% of eBay’s revenue last year.