PayPal PowerHouse

There is no stopping PayPal. It's talent pool just gets deeper (see below), its payment service richer and market share larger. What are competitors like ClickandBuy doing? Just playing for a distant 2nd place in this race?

PayPal recruits execs from Visa and American Express

PayPal Inc., the online payment service owned by eBay Inc., has created four new senior management positions and filled them with payment industry veterans, including executives from Visa International and American Express Company. “PayPal is at a point in the life of our company where we’re becoming mainstream, and we’re bringing in people that have tremendous experience in payments,” a spokeswoman tells Internet Retailer. PayPal has 164 million registered users around the world.

The new hires are:

* Barry Herstein as chief marketing officer, responsible for PayPal’s global brand and marketing strategy and implementation. Herstein previously was chief marketing officer for American Express International’s consumer business.
* Jack Stephenson as senior vice president of strategy and new ventures, responsible for defining the strategic direction of the company. Stephenson previously headed the North American payments practice at consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
* Robert Mansell as vice president of product development, overseeing product strategy and development for PayPal’s payment system. Mansell spent 13 years at Visa International, most recently as vice president of the VisaNet Authorization System at Inovant, Visa’s IT organization.
* Mary Anne Gillespie as vice president of sales, responsible for increasing adoption of PayPal among online merchants. Gillespie has 30 years of sales experience, most recently as vice president of sales at Guidewire Software and before that as senior vice president of Americas field operations for Informatica.

“It’s a testament to PayPal’s current success and its future market opportunities that we are able to attract executives of such high caliber,” says Rajiv Dutta, president of PayPal. “With this team in place, I’m absolutely confident that we will continue to grow and deliver safe and easy payments for our customers around the world.” http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=24777