Facebook managed to pull of a major hire today, poaching David Marcus from PayPal, the eBay-owned payments company where he served as president.

The move was reported today by Re/Code’s Kara Swisher, and confirmed by PayPal in a press release. According to the report, Marcus will be heading up the social media giant’s Messaging service, which is a curious transition from Marcus’s payment background. Swisher hypothesizes that this move could mean that Facebook is gearing up to monetize its Messaging service, which currently has 200 million monthly active users and processes 12 billion messages daily.

This move is also noteworthy because Facebook said in a recent earnings call that the company was not interested in pursuing peer-to-peer payments. That despite the fact that Facebook applied for an e-money license in Ireland last April, according to a Financial Times report.

David Marcus himself commented on Facebook on his departure from PayPal, writing:

I thought long and hard about how I could express the range of emotions that are going through me as I write this post, and to put it simply… it’s hard…So after much deliberation, I decided now is the right time for me to move on to something that is closer to what I love to do every day. Now is the time, because I feel that PayPal has never been in a better position to capitalize on its unique place in the market. Now is the time, because the product pipeline is strong, and these new experiences are scaling out. Now is the time, because PayPal’s reputation with developers is getting better by the day, because Braintree’s acquisition will truly enable PayPal to win in that space. Now is the time, because the leadership team is strong, and talent is flowing into the company again. In summary, now is time because PayPal is on track to achieve the greatness it deserves in the years to come.