David A. Marcus


David Marcus is an American entrepreneur. He is the co-creator and a board member of Libra, a cryptocurrency project initiated by Facebook. He is the former president of PayPal and Vice President of Messaging Products at Facebook where he ran the Facebook Messenger unit from 2014 until 2018. In December 2017, Marcus was appointed to the Coinbase Board of Directors, from which he stepped down in 2018.

Early life and education

Marcus was born on April 12, 1973 in Paris, France to a Romanian father and Iranian mother. He grew up in Geneva, Switzerland. At the age of 8, he learned basic computer coding. Marcus attended the University of Geneva for one year before dropping out initially to support his family by working at a bank and later to pursue an entrepreneurial career.

Career

Marcus started his career in 1996 at age 23 when he founded his first venture, GTN Telecom, a Geneva-based provider of internet access and local- and long-distance calling. He served as the Chairman and CEO of that company until it was acquired by World Access in 2000. Soon after, Marcus founded Echovox, a mobile media monetization company. In 2008, he founded Zong, an offshoot of Echovox that allowed users to pay for items online directly through their mobile phone bills.
Zong was acquired by eBay's PayPal in August 2011 for $240 million, and Marcus joined PayPal as vice president and general manager of the company's Mobile Division. Under his leadership, PayPal launched its offline mobile card reader solution, PayPal Here. In April 2012 he was selected to replace Scott Thompson as President of PayPal after Thompson went to Yahoo. In September 2013, Marcus oversaw PayPal's $800-million acquisition of Braintree.
In June 2014, Marcus stepped down as President of PayPal to join Facebook as its Vice President of Messaging Products. In this role, he would largely go on to oversee the development of the Facebook Messenger mobile app. The app reached 1 billion active users in July 2016. Marcus is credited with the introduction of Messenger's P2P payment platform which was released in the United States in June 2015. Marcus would later help implement business payments on the platform.
In December 2017, Marcus was appointed to the Board of Directors of the cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase. According to the announcement, he was chosen based on his experience with digital payments at both PayPal and Facebook and his knowledge of cryptocurrency. He is also considered an early promoter of cryptocurrency.
On May 8, 2018, Marcus revealed that he is stepping down from his current role to lead the experimental blockchain group at Facebook.