With compliance becoming more of a focus in alternative payments, PayPal is adding a new senior-director position who will focus on coordinating the company’s compliance endeavors.

PayPal has been searching for a new “senior director of North American compliance” for about a month. The senior director will enhance PayPal’s existing compliance program in North America, reporting in to the company’s vice president-chief compliance officer, Leonard Shen.

The senior director’s main objective:

While there is an existing Compliance program for North America, this role would be a new position given leadership responsibility to develop a core vision meeting bank regulatory standards, drive rigor, and form a close business partnership for the North America business, under the oversight of the global VP-CCO.

The chief compliance officer itself is a relatively new position, created just last fall.

All this points to a heightened focus on compliance on PayPal. I would expect that compliance costs will continue to escalate at PayPal. There’s just too little oversight of PayPal and the like today. My expectation from speaking to regulators is that compliance requirements will only advance in alternative payments.