Capital One Financial Corp., the credit-card lender that grew into a diversified bank, hired former PayPal executive Don Kingsborough to help run a division that makes strategic investments in technology startups.
Kingsborough, 68, will join as a managing director in San Francisco and work with Jaidev Shergill, the head of the ventures team, Tatiana Stead, a spokeswoman for Capital One, said in an e-mail. The ventures group buys minority stakes and sometimes takes over new technology companies. Re/code reported the move earlier Wednesday.
Chief Executive Officer Richard Fairbank, who used data analytics to pioneer credit-card lending on his way to building one of the largest U.S. regional banks, is looking for new technology to help the firm remain competitive and expand. He has opened innovation labs in San Francisco and New York and partnered with companies including Apple Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc.
"I was just so impressed by the people and their commitment to really be in the forefront of digital change," Kingsborough said in a telephone interview. "They have an entrepreneurial leader who still runs this company and his commitment for change."
Kingsborough announced early this year that he would leave PayPal, where he was in charge of taking the digital payments company's retail and prepaid products into brick-and-mortar retail stores. In February, he told Re/code he wished the executive team did more to make PayPal a popular payment option in offline stores.
PayPal Holdings Inc. debuted as a stand-alone public company on Monday after separating from EBay Inc.
