PayPal Holdings Inc. said it promoted William J. Ready, whose most recent roles have included heading the online-commerce company's Braintree unit and peer-to-peer payments app Venmo, to chief operating officer.

The move comes as PayPal in recent months has inked deals with big card issuers Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. in an effort to become a universally accepted method of payment—part of the online-payment pioneer's strategy after splitting off from eBay Inc. last year.

Mr. Ready, 37 years old, has been PayPal's global product and engineering chief since January. His responsibilities have included Braintree, which processes payments for big merchants, as well as Venmo, a social peer-to-peer payments app popular with millenials.

He was brought aboard with PayPal's 2013 acquisition of Braintree Payments Solutions, where he was CEO. The roughly $800 million deal, which included Venmo, marked a bet by PayPal to secure a leading position in a race to get consumers to pay for goods and services on mobile devices.

Since its separation from eBay, PayPal has sought to find new ways to both expand its overall usage and defend its pricing power as it faces off against an expanding array of payments options for consumers, such as Apple Inc.'s Apple Pay, and young payments providers such as Stripe Inc.

Write to Tess Stynes at tess.stynes@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 03, 2016 22:05 ET (02:05 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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