Barry McCarthy will be leaving payments startup Clinkle as its Chief Operating Officer, VentureBeat reported.The company whose operations are still stealth mode announced the news just a few months after paring down nearly a quarter of its workforce.

In a blog post written on March 13, 2014, Clinkle Chief Operating Officer Lucas Duplan said, "Barry McCarthy, Clinkle's chief operating officer, will relinquish his responsibility for day-to-day operations to act as an advisor to Clinkle and to me personally. Given the company's need to focus on product and engineering for the foreseeable future - in other words, until we achieve scale in our operations - we both agree that it's best for him to shift his responsibilities to an advising role. Barry is a terrific executive - and I've learned an enormous amount from him. I know I speak for everyone at Clinkle in thanking him deeply for his contributions."

Duplan added that he and Chief Financial Officer Mike Liberatore will be taking care of the responsibilities that McCarthy will leave behind.

Clinkle made headlines when it bagged the largest ever seed funding round of $25 million. Duplan also said in the blog post that Stanford University has become an investor, giving "several million dollars" to the company. The startup is said to have already gathered over $30 million from its backers before it has even launched its product, VentureBeat reported.

According to Duplan, Clinkle already made its app available to employees last month and they've also allowed friends and family to test it beginning today. He is still positive that college students will be able to use Clinkle by the end of this year. Although the startup is putting itself as a direct rival to PayPal and other mobile payments platforms, what will make it stand out from the rest is still something that remains to be seen, the report said.