On Monday, eBay and PayPal began notifying employees who were losing their jobs as part of the cuts, multiple sources tell Re/code, as management looks to scale back initiatives that haven't panned out ahead of the planned split of the two companies in the second half of this year.

Some of the PayPal employees who lost their jobs held sales and product roles in the division that focuses on getting restaurants and small business retail stores to accept PayPal as a payment method, one source said. PayPal's in-store initiatives, which include mobile payments and a credit card reader called PayPal Here, have largely been viewed as big disappointments inside the company, multiple sources say. Another example: PayPal's in-store beacon product, which was announced in September of 2013, still hasn't launched widely.

While the PayPal cuts weren't isolated to these teams, the severity of them suggest that PayPal may be looking to refocus on its core Web and in-app payments under CEO-designee Dan Schulman. PayPal's Braintree unit, which houses the red-hot Venmo peer-to-peer payments app, is not affected by the cuts, a source says.