David Marcus, the head of eBay's PayPal unit, is leaving the company for Facebook. He will head Facebook’s Messenger application and other mobile messaging efforts, the companies announced on Monday, Reports, Reuters. And reporting to Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Javier Olivan, who is in charge of growth at the social network. David Marcus, who has led eBay Inc's fast-growing payments unit PayPal for the past two years.

In the newly created role of Vice President of Messaging Products, Marcus will oversee the Messenger service within Facebook's social network as well as the free Messenger mobile app, said Facebook spokeswoman Vanessa Chan. Roughly 12 billion messages are sent every day on Facebook, and the Messenger app has more than 200 million users, according to the company.

EBay shares fell a little more than 2 per cent in trading after hours. Under Marcus, PayPal has moved more aggressively into the physical world.

Facebook's strategy appears centered around breaking up its service into separate applications that can create their own customer base.

In his own Facebook post, Marcus said Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg persuaded him to take the new job.

The move also marks Facebook's latest effort to bolster its private messaging features as it faces competition from a new crop of popular mobile messaging services such as Snapchat and Line.

The move comes as PayPal, which has 148 million active users, faces tougher global competition from Amazon.com Inc, which launched a recurring payments program earlier on Monday, as well as Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd, which is going public later this year.