Venmo cofounder’s Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail appear to have stepped down from day-to-day activities at the mobile payments company, multiple sources within the company have told Bank Innovation.
While Kortina and Magdon-Ismail are still affiliated with the company, current COO Mike Vaughan is reportedly running the company, the sources say.
Venmo is owned by Braintree, which is owned by PayPal.
According to our sources, Kortina is said to remain active as an advisor for the company, but Magdon-Ismail is not. The two co-founders of the payments startup were reportedly “MIA” in the media and as the face of the company in recent months.
A Braintree spokesperson said, “Bill Ready continues to be CEO of Venmo and the founders are still with the company and report into Bill.” without elaborating.
According to Crunchbase, Kortina was that the company’s CFO and that Magdon-Ismail was its president. However, on the company’s About page, the two were simply listed as “cofounder” and the only person with “chief” in their title is Mike Vaughan.
Before coming to Venmo as the company’s COO in 2011, Vaughan worked at J.G. Wentworth and TicketLeap, where he helped the companies launch digital programs and pushed revenue up 850% in three years at TicketLeap.
Eventually, Vaughan came to work under Kortina and Magdon-Ismail as Venmo’s COO. He’s been at the company for three years now, and was part of both the Venmo-Braintree acquisition and PayPal’s acquisition of Braintree, according to Vaughan’s LinkedIn profile.
As for Kortina and Magdon-Ismail, it is not known what they’ll be doing next or what caused their departure. Kortina took part of Cover’s Series A round a few months ago, according to Crunchbase.
Sources tell Bank Innovation that Kortina and Magdon-Ismail were essentially “checked out” during meetings, and seemed uninterested in the direction of the company.
Venmo hasn’t released a new feature since Venmo Touch, a one-click mobile payment method, last May. Previously, Bank Innovation heard rumors that Venmo was developing a “Pay with Venmo” feature. That has yet to be released. Venmo reportedly handled $314 million of mobile payments in the first quarter of 2014, 62% higher than the previous quarter.