PayPal's offline chief quits

PayPal's offline chief quits

The man behind PayPal's move into the bricks and mortar world, Don Kingsborough, has quit the firm, admitting it has come up short in its efforts to move beyond online payments.

Kingsborough told Re/code he leaves the eBay unit "a little frustrated" and wished the executive team "would have done more".

After stints at Atari and prepaid specialist Blackhawk Network, Kingsborough joined PayPal in 2011 to head up retail and prepaid products, taking the company into the offline world and challenging Visa and MasterCard.

He managed to strike deals with some major retailers, such as Home Depot, to get PayPal accepted at the point-of-sale and also got some large POS manufactures onboard.

In 2012 a tie-up with Discover saw PayPal tap into the card firm's network to bring acceptance of mobile wallet payments to millions of US stores. Yet Kingsborough admits that this failed to have the desired impact, blaming "execution".

"We just didn’t stay focused on the things that would make a difference … on distribution and on a clear method to take people who shopped online and bring them into stores," he told Re/code.

PayPal has undergone major upheaval over the last few months, losing president David Marcus and embarking on job cuts as it prepares for a spin-off from eBay later this year.

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