'Frustrated' Kingsborough Leaves PayPal

PayPal is starting the year without its vice president and general manager of retail and prepaid of the past four years.

Don Kingsborough left the company last month, PayPal confirmed Feb. 4. He left the company expressing frustration with PayPal's progress on a key initiative with Discover, he stated in an interview in re/code.

Kingsborough was front and center when PayPal and Discover announced a partnership in August of 2012 to give PayPal, a giant in e-commerce payments, exposure at the physical point of sale. The initiative launched in April 2013.

"Don Kingsborough made a decision to leave the company and his last day with PayPal was last month," PayPal said in a company statement issued via e-mail by spokesperson Jennifer Hakes.

"We wish him the best and appreciate his contributions which allowed PayPal to gain a strong foothold in offline retail," the statement added.

PayPal also confirmed it would "continue to test, learn and invest in our in-store retail initiatives," citing the PayPal Here product and PayPal apps such as Order Ahead.

PayPal did not respond to inquiries about a possible replacement in the company's retail position.

Kingsborough's departure in January coincided with eBay president and CEO John Donahoe revealing the company would eliminate jobs as part of PayPal's split.

In the re/code interview, Kingsborough said he made up his mind that he was going to leave PayPal last summer, but agreed to stay on until a new president was hired to replace David Marcus, who left last year for a job at Facebook. Dan Schulman, previously an American Express executive, was named president of PayPal in October. Schulman will continue to lead PayPal after the company's planned spinoff this year.

Prior to joining PayPal in 2011, Kingsborough was CEO at Blackhawk Network/Safeway Inc. for 10 years. He also held CEO positions at Yes! Entertainment and Worlds of Wonder, and was president at Atari from 1976 to 1983. He is credited with bringing the talking bear Teddy Ruxpin to market, and for bringing the Nintendo Entertainment System to the U.S.