Facebook poaches PayPal president David Marcus to run Messenger

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.

If I call in with a problem, give me someone that can both answer my questions and put fingers on the keyboard and fix said problem.

Not really that hard. No more indian call centers, no more useless CS, no more hiding need-to-know information behind the all-consuming veil of "fraud protection" (something its competitors don't seem to have that much of an issue with).

That's 90% of your problems fixed right there. The other 10% would be the inconsistent enforcement of rules.

Combating fraud is hard, at scale with half the worlds petty criminals seeing you as the obstacle between them and their victims you're in for a rough ride.

I wouldn't judge them too harshly. (Even if I personally will never use them ever again I do appreciate the kind of issues they have to deal with.)

I'm sure there's some little things they could dabble in but realistically the only things people want from Paypal are less fees, less account closures/theft from account holders, faster transfers and overall better customer support.

Paypal doesn't need to innovate, they need to fix the obvious issues that relegate their service to a "barely workable until the instant someone better comes along" paradigm.

The amount of friction within a company like Paypal I would imagine is quite high. Not even those at the top of companies like these can change things at the flick of a switch. Things move very slowly in large companies, this is why smaller startups are able to come along and shake things up so easily before being acquired. It is how it is.

But that's what it means...? Or do you mean like in the literal sense, like is your comment about illegally hunting wild animals? (which nobody would ever confuse for a second.)

If you are talking about the same thing everyone else is (hiring) then what do you mean by "actual poaching is illegal"? I am trying to really give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you know what you're talking about, but I just can't make heads or tails of your comment...

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

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