Facebook Adds Another PayPal Executive, Stan Chudnovsky, to Messenger Team

Facebook has poached another executive from PayPal to work on Facebook Messenger: VP of Growth Stan Chudnovsky.

Facebook announced the hire Wednesday, just six months after snatching PayPal President David Marcus to run the company’s messaging products. Chudnovsky will handle product management for Messenger and will report directly to Marcus, a company spokesperson said.

The addition of yet another PayPal executive may lead to more speculation that Facebook is set on building some type of payments product into Messenger. But despite Chudnovsky’s year-and-a-half tenure at PayPal, he isn’t really a payments guy. He’s a growth guy who has worked on gaming and social media companies in the past, and knows how to attract new users and customers.

His most recent startup, IronPearl, helped other companies “optimize growth and improve customer retention,” according to his PayPal bio. He joined PayPal when IronPearl was acquired by eBay just over 18 months ago, so his exposure to payments was short-lived. That experience may come in handy if Messenger does pursue payments or commerce-related integrations down the road, but the company likely values his other experience just as much.

Plus, while Marcus and Chudnovsky did work together for about a year at PayPal, a source familiar with the hire said Chudnovsky was actually originally recruited by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Javier Olivan, Facebook’s VP of growth, to work on the growth team. He ultimately decided on the position with Messenger.

Chudnovsky will start in early February.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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