eBay Inc has named David Marcus as the president of their PayPal division.  Marcus replaced Scott Thompson who left in January to become Yahoo! Inc.’s chief executive.

Effective Monday, Marcus will be reporting directly to Chief Executive John Donahoe.  Prior to this, Marcus was already leading PayPal’s mobile payments business.

Donahoe stated on PayPal’s blog post that he picked David as PayPal’s leader because he “is a successful technology entrepreneur with a passion for great products that engage and delight customers.”

“He’s going to lead PayPal with that ‘founder’s perspective,’ to bring start-up energy to PayPal’s unmatched global reach and digital payment capabilities. With David at the helm, we will have an even deeper commitment at PayPal, and across eBay Inc., to be a leading technology-driven and customer-focused product innovation company. We’ll continue to focus on accelerating product innovation, driving consumer engagement and creating a world where paying anytime, anywhere and any way is synonymous with PayPal,” Donahoe added.

Marcus, the founder and former CEO of mobile payments manager Zong, joined the PayPal team last year when eBay bought Zong for $240 million.  eBay stated that Zong added ‘complementary technology and talent’ to their PayPal division, giving consumers more ways to pay for virtual goods and products online.

In other eBay news

In India, eBay is tweaking their marketing strategy to urge online shoppers to buy more high-margin products, such as clothes and shoes instead of electronic gadgets and books.  The reason behind this is that electronic gadgets and books, though very popular among consumers, command lower profit margins and are less frequent purchases.

And eBay is urging  Maine Governor Paul LePage to protect online sellers.  LePage sent a letter to two senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, asking them to support  legislation to allow states to tax online purchases.  In response to LePage’s letter, eBay’s U.S. Government Relations and Global Public Policy Director Brian Bieron sent him a letter asking him to protect small business retailers from new Internet Sales Tax burdens in the State of Maine.

“Small businesses are the cornerstone of recovering local economies. eBay stands committed to working with you for balanced proposals that protect small business retailers in Maine and across the nation by including a robust small business exemption in any new Internet Sales Tax proposal,” wrote Bieron.

Bieron stated that most online sellers are small businesses dealing with large companies with greater reach.  Implementing a new tax on these online sellers could possibly kill their business.

“A small business retailer operating only in Maine is not required to collect sales taxes across America. This is entirely fair and it helps the small business retailer in Main compete with multi-billion dollar retailers that have operations in every state and enjoy many cost advantages,” Bieron stated.