PayPal COO Bill Ready Announces Departure

Big news from PayPal — the payments firm on Thursday afternoon (June 20) that COO Bill Ready is leaving the company.

According to a statement from PayPal, “Ready will transition at the end of 2019 to pursue entrepreneurial interests outside the company.” Ready joined PayPal six years ago after it bought Braintree, where he was CEO (along with Venmo). Prior to that, the payments veteran was president of iPay Technologies.

“Since joining PayPal six years ago, I have had the privilege of working alongside many incredibly talented people, and I am proud of what we as a leadership team have accomplished together,” said Ready. “The transformative work we are doing has positioned PayPal for success well into the future. I am excited for PayPal’s future and committed to using the coming months to ensure a smooth transition, and support the great team we have at PayPal.”

Ready has been a frequent presence in PYMNTS coverage. In one lengthy interview with Karen Webster, he talked about changes in consumer buying habits, and what that meant for their retail and payment expectations as the digital economy keeps growing. That interview still serves as good view of some of the main challenges faced by payments and commerce players as they head into 2020.

In that interview, Ready told Webster that when he thinks of the evolution of payments — particularly mobile payments — he thinks back to the old adage about college campus planners making a decision about where to put the sidewalks.

“You can lay a sidewalk somewhere that a landscape architect says it will look nice and hope to convince people to walk on it,” Ready said, “or you can look at where the grass is already trampled down, and lay the sidewalk where people are already walking.” Getting people to do a new thing is hard, Ready noted, but getting people to do something they’re already doing and offering them a better version? That has legs. (No pun intended.)