
Facebook poaches PayPal president David Marcus to run Messenger - slckfielder08
http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/facebook-poaches-paypal-president-david-marcus-to-run-messenger-maybe-monetize-it-with-payments/
======
tehwebguy
How is it that so many seemingly incredible people come out of PayPal, and
PayPal still sucks so much?

The all-star list is insane, it keeps growing, and yet PayPal still that can't
seem to do anything new.

~~~
panarky
PayPal and eBay are hugely vulnerable. They've underinvested in
infrastructure, their technology is old, and they've become slow and
bureaucratic. Worst of all, their ideas are stale and the user experience is
dreadful.

PayPal's fat margins aren't justified by the service they provide, only by the
lack of alternatives. But new alternatives are launching much faster than eBay
can respond.

Square has become a well-run, genuine alternative. BitPay / Coinbase are still
very small, but the cryptocurrency wildcard at least shines a light on what
money transfer should cost.

Amazon is quietly expanding their payments footprint. The famous Bezos quote
seems appropriate here: "Your margins are my opportunity."

Apple exposing their Touch ID API will level the playing field, exposing
PayPal to more competition and margin pressure. Look out if Apple starts using
their billion-credit-card database to get into payments themselves.

If Facebook/Whatsapp can payment-enable messaging and do it at a lower cost,
PayPal's raison d'etre starts looking pretty questionable.

And now eBay leaking personally-identifiable information on 150 million
customers isn't helping maintain trust or brand image. The breach couldn't
have happened at a worse time.

We could be looking at the Blockbusterization of eBay and PayPal. The stock
price is starting to reflect this reality, so look for more key people to
leave in coming months.

~~~
rtx
So why are there no alternatives to Paypal. It's been fifteen years. Cost you
are talking about is in built in money transfer business. Fraud prevention
alone will kill most of the start-ups.

~~~
LandoCalrissian
Square, Stripe and maybe even Coinbase to an extent. You could even throw in
Amazon payments and Google wallet as well. They are in a tough spot, and their
brand is always taking damage from how they run things.

I think they will die from not one big dog taking over, but a bunch of smaller
companies each taking bites out of their market share.

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bmm6o
Maybe I'm being nit-picky, I wish we would stop using "poaching" to refer to
the (legal) hiring of a person already employed at another company. Actual
poaching is illegal, conversely anti-"poaching" pacts are collusive and
illegal.

~~~
asdfologist
Source?

According to Merriam-Webster, to poach means "to attract (as an employee or
customer) away from a competitor". No indication of illegality here.

~~~
mburns
It's the very next definition of the page you are quoting.

Poach (verb) "to trespass for the purpose of stealing game; also : to take
game or fish illegally"

~~~
asdfologist
That's the wrong definition though. Humans are not "game".

~~~
skj
That's the GGP's point, I think. The word 'poaching' is used because the
humans are _treated_ as game, and continuing to use that word continues to
bring up that connotation.

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mcintyre1994
It's interesting that according to the FT article mentioned [0] the license is
for Europe - and they're talking with UK payments companies. I'm not sure
about the rest of Europe, but in the UK I don't imagine a lot of interest -
payments are easy by bank transfer. Paying to other European countries isn't
great via the banks, I imagine most people use something like Paypal now. But
I don't think international payments are likely to be a big part of Facebook
realistically.

The license is apparently valid throughout Europe though so maybe other
countries have poorer bank transfer systems and this would be better.

[0] It's paywalled, so techcrunch discussion:
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/facebook-emoney-whatsapp-
re...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/facebook-emoney-whatsapp-remittance/)
, FT article :
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0e0ef050-c16a-11e3-97b2-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0e0ef050-c16a-11e3-97b2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz34BQwTwv1)
, google search for it (dodges paywall) :
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=facebook+targets+financial...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=facebook+targets+financial+services+site%3Aft.com)

~~~
ama729
> Paying to other European countries isn't great via the banks

How so? With SEPA[1] it's both easy (European wide bank account number) and
free (might not be the case if both accounts use different currencies though,
but in euros it's free).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area)

~~~
mcintyre1994
That was definitely an oversight on my part, sorry. I'm in the UK and while we
have free payments to UK banks we don't to Europe. My bank charges £22 and
takes 2-4 days to make a payment in Euros to Europe, from GBP. We do have
EBANs though. Paypal was much better but SEPA sounds like a much better
approach.

That just makes me wonder more why they went for Europe first, it seems to be
impossible to monetise pretty much anything except cross currency.

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zaidf
This is a huge, huge loss for PayPal.

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philip1209
David's post announcing the change:

[https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140609203227-3...](https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140609203227-356899-here-
s-to-an-amazing-team-and-to-new-beginnings)

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abraxasz
Genuine question: The article goes on and on about how making the apps paid in
developing countries would make more sense than using ads, etc, etc.. Ok, I
see the point. But is it really that different from the developed countries?
How much do they get per user in advertisement? How much would it cost me if I
wanted to opt out of advertisement? I don't know if people in general prefer
ads, but if I had to pay, say $5 a year for a an ad-free whatsapp, I'd gladly
pay. Is it ridiculously low compare to what they make with ads?

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gexla
Congrats to David Marcus.

I'm kind of bummed to see him doing good things with a product I consider a
core part of the services I use and then leave to join a product I don't much
care for.

What's great about Paypal is that it's good for both business and personal.
Facebook is horrible for making that separation. I couldn't see myself using
Facebook over Paypal. Though most important is the adoption. If it's easy and
everyone is using it, then I suppose that could change my mind.

Good luck to all involved.

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Alupis
Seems odd, that a big payment service's exec would get poached to head-up a
chat service (likely implemented using XMPP).

I mean, if FB was serious about chat, wasn't there an exec at a chat-focused
company that would have been a better fit?

Also, why would the President of PayPal leave (his Top-dog position) to take
on a head of a mere department at another company? Also seems odd...

~~~
simonk
Did you see what his old company did? Payments through mobile phones.

~~~
Alupis
Yes I did... but that is still not a chat business.

Twitter, WhatsApp, SnapChat... all their executives would have been more of a
natural fit.

~~~
boomzilla
Meaning FB is getting into payment, or some sort of credit transferring via
the Messenger app. I am actually surprised it took this long for FB to revive
the doomed FB credit service. I mean, by now FB probably has more info about
many people than banks and debt collectors.

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jonathanmarcus
Facebook may be generating significant mobile revenue, but the core Facebook
mobile / app strategy is suspect. Poke, Home and Paper have all been flops,
and it's hard to imagine Slingshot faring any better.

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kolev
This sounds like a demotion. I personally thought he had a misconduct trying
to pump Bitcoin while at the same time fessing up that he owns bitcoins -
especially when many perceive Bitcoin as a PayPal competitor.

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jacquesm
How long before Facebook will attack paypal on its home turf?

They could do a pretty good job of it too, what with facebook knowing who you
are (within reason) and who your friends are they could set this up in such a
way that they could side-step the biggest problems with payments through
paypal.

The tell-tale will be when facebook registers as a bank somewhere.

Edit: hello downvoter, feel free to disagree a bit more verbosely.

~~~
rehabindian
Tell tale achieved:
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/14/facebook-e...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/14/facebook-
e-money-transfer-service-europe)

~~~
jacquesm
I totally missed that. Thanks!

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nonuby
It looks like Rakesh Agrawal was right, Paypal really is washed out.

