[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Neal Sample will join the American Express technology team responsible for its digital commerce platform, Serve. Mr. Sample most recently served as the CTO of X.commerce, eBay’s open development and commerce platform. Prior to X.commerce, he was Vice President of Architecture and Platform Products at eBay, where he was responsible for leading the company’s platform architecture, product strategy and managing the design and delivery of the developers program. Prior to eBay, Mr. Sample was a senior executive at Yahoo where he led the Open, Social, and Participation platforms. In addition to platform operation and development, his team was responsible for partnerships with Zynga, Facebook and Twitter.

Mr. Sample attended Stanford University where he received his MS and PhD in Computer Science. He also completed a post-doctoral research fellowship with the CIA Office of Research and Development.

Serve, by American Express, is an open technology platform designed to deliver emerging payments and services. Serve launched in March 2011 and has a number of partners in the U.S.

[Image Courtesy: American Express]