Apple loses global payments executive to eBay's rumored PayPal replacement

It appears that eBay is stocking up on talent in preparation of an inevitable separation from PayPal, the latest hire being Bora Chung, a payments expert who served as Apple's worldwide payments for the Online Apple Store since 2010.

According to SFGate, Chung was hired on to eBay's new Marketplace division by another former Apple executive, e-commerce boss R.J. Pittman. The move is thought to be related to an impending payments service set to launch once PayPal is spun off from the Internet auction giant later this year.

At Apple, Chung headed up worldwide payments and financing of the Online Apple Store, according to her LinkedIn profile that still lists Apple as a current employer. Prior to Apple, Chung worked at PayPal from 2007 to 2011, starting out as senior director of global platform operations before becoming senior director of branded payments.

Chung's pedigree in banking dates back to 1995 when she worked as an analyst at Merrill Lynch. She later took a position at Asia-centric venture capital firm Athena Technology Ventures.

While her official title at eBay is unknown, Chung will likely answer to Pittman, who led Apple's e-commerce activities and was responsible for the Personal Pickup program. He left the company on good terms in 2013, saying Apple is "a great company, but eBay is on a completely different level by an order of magnitude when it comes to e-commerce." The iPhone maker announced its Apple Pay mobile payments service less than a year later.

Apple Pay was first revealed during Apple's iPhone launch event last year and was subsequently activated in an iOS update pushed out a month later. Early market reactions have been positive, but the mobile payments industry is nowhere close to impinging on more traditional payments.

Details of eBay's PayPal replacement have not been learned, though rumors point to a solution that could in some respects rival Apple Pay, as well as other online payments services.