The head of Facebook payments is stepping down after 7 years. David Marcus announced the news in a post on a different social networking site – LinkedIn.
Marcus had founded Zong and joined PayPal in 2011 when it acquired the mobile payments firm. He became president of PayPal the following year, and left for Facebook in 2014.
Marcus called his seven years at Meta (the new parent name of Facebook) fulfilling, and called the decision to leave difficult.
“While there’s still so much to do right on the heels of hitting an important milestone with Novi launching – and I remain as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems – my entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring it,” he wrote.
It was one month ago that Facebook (Meta) rebranded its payments division to Novi.
Novi is also the name of Facebook’s digital wallet for its Libra cryptocurrency that launched in May 2020.
Apparently Marcus has no new job or project lined up after his departure, writing, “I now look forward to having more free time in the months to come before I start building something new and exciting again.” He did not say if he would remain on the board of Diem Association (formerly the Libra Association).
In reporting the news, CNBC wrote, “Marcus’s departure comes after the company tried and failed to launch a cryptocurrency that could be used to send money online to anyone in the world via Facebook products.”
