Less than eighteen months after his appointment, David Sear has resigned as the CEO of Weve, the B2B m-commerce venture owned by the UK’s three largest operators.

No new destination has been given, although Sear is not heading to any of Weve’s shareholders – Telefonica, Vodafone or EE – the company confirmed to Mobile World Live.

However, Sear will be around for the immediate future. A statement – initially reported in The Drum – said Sear will depart “in due course” but will lead Weve while it looks for a successor. Which means he will be around for the summer, said the report.

Sear’s background was in payments, rather than the mobile industry.

He previously spent six years at Travelex, the money services group, as a divisional managing director, global business payments. He has also worked for Voca, a UK payment services company. Between 1999 and 2003 he worked for WorldPay, a pioneering online payments firm.

He gave Weve a profile in the industry, and was not afraid to speak out on the failure of past initiatives, for instance hailing an alliance with MasterCard as a means to clean up “messy” mobile payments.

At Mobile World Congress in February Mobile World Live interviewed Sear- see the video here.