Paysafe has appointed Chirag Patel, a former Santander and Amazon executive, to lead its digital wallets division.

The payments platform said that as CEO of the global digital wallets business, Patel will report directly into Group CEO, Philip McHugh, when he joins the company in early September.

Paysafe’s digital wallet solutions, which include Skrill and NETELLER, enable consumers to store, withdraw and make purchases in more than 40 currencies from a virtual account and buy and sell interests in cryptocurrency and make international money transfers.

Patel joins Paysafe from Santander Group where he was global head of payments. While there, he launched a global payments platform and increased usage of the bank’s payments products and services.

Prior to Santander, Patel was Amazon’s head of payments, Europe and International Expansion, where he was responsible for the company’s product roadmap for emerging payments technologies and international payment expansion.

He has also held senior executive roles in payments and financial services for other financial institutions including Softcard (acquired by Google), American Express Services Europe Limited and Merchant Services Group Int.

Philip McHugh, chief executive of Paysafe, said: “Chirag has an awesome track record as a high-performing payments’ executive and has successfully launched and grown multiple consumer-facing and B2B payments products and services around the world. I’m thrilled to have someone of his caliber and energy-level to take our digital wallets business to the next level of growth.”

The company claims its technology is used by 3.5 million consumers around the world and has generated $20.4 billion total payment volume in 2020.

Patel said: “I am really looking forward to joining the Paysafe team next month and to be given the opportunity to lead its exciting digital wallets business. I believe there is enormous potential to extend the offering to more and more customers given Skrill and NETELLER’s worldwide presence, combined with Paysafe’s great technology and talented team.”

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