Dive Brief:
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Newly independent payments company PayPal Tuesday said that John Rainey will join the company as CFO as of Aug. 24.
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Rainey is leaving airline giant United Continental Holdings, where he has served as CFO for three years and in other financial positions there since 2005.
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Patrick Dupuis will leave the CFO position at PayPal to take on a new role, SVP of “simplicity, quality and productivity,” according to a PayPal statement.
Dive Insight:
It may not make sense at first blush for a big tech company, newly free of a tech parent, to tap a CFO from a company as traditional and large as an airline. But PayPal has been in search of a CFO with more experience than Dupuis at a large public company with several financial moving parts.
That range of skill and expertise is much needed at PayPal, which now has a lot of unmet potential as a public company free of former parent eBay, but which is now also facing a range of challenges from upstart competitors like Square and a burgeoning mobile payments market.
“In a big airline you have technology, thin margins, and you’re moving cash and business all around the world,” said Peter Crist, chairman of Crist|Kolder Associates, which led PayPal’s search for a qualified CFO candidate, told the Wall Street Journal.
Rainey apparently fits the bill, having had several financial positions at United since 2005, involving strategy and investor relations as well as a wide range of financial matters.
