Dive Brief:

• Digital payments giant PayPal Holdings appointed Blake Jorgensen as its new CFO, effective Wednesday, the company announced Tuesday. 

• Jorgensen, 62, previously served as CFO at videogame maker Electronic Arts, jeans maker Levi Strauss & Co. and Yahoo! Inc., according to PayPal. He succeeds interim CFO Gabrielle Rabinovitch, who was promoted from within to the seat after then CFO John Rainey notified PayPal in April that he was leaving to take the finance helm at retail giant Walmart Inc.

• Jorgensen’s compensation includes an annual base salary of $750,000, a target bonus opportunity of 125% of his salary, equity grants, and a “new hire” cash bonus with an aggregate value of $6 million, with one-half paid shortly after he starts at PayPal, $1 million paid in November with the remainder paid on his one-year anniversary at the company, according to a company filing. 

Dive Insight:

While signing or new-hire bonuses such as Jorgensen’s have long been used as a buyout tool to attract executives, they recently appear to be gaining favor and are being paid out more quickly than the 12-24 months after the start date that had been more prevalent in past years, Josh Crist, co-managing partner at executive search firm Crist|Kolder Associates, previously told CFO Dive. 

Jorgensen’s cash-payout is slightly larger than two recent high profile mega-cap bonuses. Earlier this year Walmart included a $5 million signing bonus in Rainey’s compensation package which is set to be payable six months after he started at the company while vaccine maker Pfizer gave a one-time cash payment of $5 million to its new CFO, David Denton, that was payable within 30 days of his effective date. 

Jorgensen is taking the San Jose, California-based PayPal’s finance helm as the payments sector and the company are facing headwinds amid inflation and rising interest rates that are threatening to damp consumer spending. The company reported a second-quarter net loss on Tuesday and pledged its allegiance to goals recently set with activist investor Elliott Investment Management, according to a Tuesday report in Payments Dive.

The company said in its filing that Jorgensen “brings nearly 40 years of leadership experiences in financial and operational excellence across industries and a deep understanding of consumer products, technology, and commerce to his role;” the company said in a filing. 

Jorgensen’s compensation package also includes equity grants that were offered “as an inducement for Mr. Jorgensen to accept employment with the company,” according to the filing. They include a new-hire service-based restricted stock award with a grant date value of $1 million, a new-hire performance-based restricted stock award with a target value of $1 million and a service-based restricted stock award with a grant date value of $8 million, according to the filing. 

Jorgensen was not available for comment, according to a PayPal spokesperson.