It’s Official: Yahoo Hires PayPal’s Sam Shrauger to Co-Lead New Consumer Division

A Yahoo spokeswoman has confirmed that Sam Shrauger, a former PayPal executive, has joined the company to co-lead its new consumer commerce business unit.

Last week, we reported that Shrauger had quietly left eBay’s payments business after heading up product for eight years and was headed to Yahoo to join his former boss.

Now it’s official.

Scott Thompson, who left PayPal to become CEO of Yahoo late last year, has slowly been putting the team back together. Thompson already grabbed PayPal PR head Amanda Pires to head up communications. Shrauger was the next obvious choice, given that Yahoo’s former product head Blake Irving resigned just two weeks ago.

Shrauger’s appointment is expected to be officially announced later today.

He will co-lead the company’s new commerce business with Mollie Spilman, a current Yahoo exec. The commerce business is vaguely being described as a new division that is expected to focus on connecting consumers to marketers and merchants. The business will focus on six major categories: autos, travel, personals, jobs, real estate and retail goods.

Despite the fairly squishy description, the group sounds a lot like PayPal’s parent company, eBay. Surprise, surprise. All Things D’s Kara Swisher had the scoop on the new commerce group last week, which was part of a widespread reorg. Thompson announced last week that the three groups would be commerce, media and connections. The latter two are being led by Ross Levinsohn and Shashi Seth.

While at PayPal, Shrauger held several roles. He helped launch the company’s merchant services business when it expanded beyond eBay, and then helped with the integration of Bill Me Later, an acquisition that PayPal made. Most recently, he worked on expanding payments to digital goods.

As a current Yahoo executive, Spilman most recently led marketing for Yahoo’s Americas region.