Former PayPal Exec: Here's Why PayPal Should Split From eBay

On eBay's Q4 earnings call, the company announced that billionaire activist Carl Icahn, who owns a 0.82% stake in eBay, wants to split off PayPal from eBay into a separate unit.

The payments industry is on fire as of late, and PayPal's revenue was up 19% to $1.8 billion in Q4. eBay as a whole grew only 13% to $4.5 billion.

When PayPal sold to eBay, eBay's transactions were roughly two-thirds or more of PayPal's volume. But today, eBay is a third or less of PayPal's volume, and it's decreasing quite a bit.

eBay is very against spinning off PayPal because PayPal is the big money-maker for the company. But as Yammer CEO and ex-PayPal COO David Sacks told Bloomberg, eBay could focus more on its own growth problems if it didn't have the PayPal crutch to rely on. As of right now, Sacks says, the non-eBay portion is growing a lot faster than the eBay portion.

Check out the full interview below: