PayPal Set To Cut 400 Jobs

PayPal is set to reduce its 13,000 workforce by three percent as part of ongoing reorganisation at the eBay-owned payment processor.

It is believed that as many as 400 jobs are at risk. They will amount to the first redundancies made by the company since the financial crisis began in 2008.

The cuts are expected in the product and technology divisions and are set to happen in the next few weeks.

PayPal job cuts

PayPal has faced increased competition from start-ups and new payment processing providers in recent times and the move is part of an effort by new CEO David Marcus to simplify the company and reduce costs.

Marcus took over in April when parent company eBay acquired Zong, the mobile payments provider he ran, and part of the reasoning behind his appointment was to give PayPal some ‘startup energy’.

Marcus has already started his reorganisation programme, aiming to remove inefficiencies such as excessive meetings and a prolonged project approval process. He has already consolidated nine product groups into one. It has also been reported that workers will be physically reorganised and moved from walled cubicles and officers to open rooms where management will sit amongst staff.

PayPal suffered embarrassment last month when a glitch caused more transactions than usual to be sent for review, slowing down many payments. The changes were due to let users transfer money from their PayPal account to their normal bank account in just a matter of hours. Before, this had taken three working days.

The company has also launched PayPal Here, a thumb-sized credit card reader that plugs into a smartphone’s audio jack.

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