Paysafe announces former Santander and Amazon executive as CEO of Wallets Division

Paysafe owns both Neteller and Skrill which are payments providers boasting more than 3.5 million users all around the world with transactions value crossing $20 billion in 2020. Using these platforms, users can make payments to other users and businesses around the world in more than 40 fiat currencies and can also buy and sell cryptocurrencies through the platform.

Philip McHugh, Paysafe’s CEO, commented: “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.”

Chirag brings with him a wealth of experience in the payments field as he has been working in this field for over 20 years in high-profile assignments. Previously, he was working in Santander as the Global Head of Payments. He helped launch a global payments platform there.  Before that, he was in Amazon as its Head of Payments, Europe, and International Expansion, where he helped with the strategy and roadmap for emerging payments technologies and international payments expansion.

Chirag Patel commented: “I am really looking forward to joining the Paysafe team next month and to be allowed 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.”

Chirag comes to the company at a crucial time as Paysafe has been facing a lot of competition in the payments space from a variety of other companies which include established players and startups which keep innovating in this space. The digital payments industry has grown manifold over the last couple of years and it has become important for companies to keep innovating and growing to keep pace with the others. Investors have also been pouring funds into this sector over the last few years and this has helped even the smaller companies to compete with the giants by presenting different products and features to the end-users.

Chirag Patel replaces former Digital Wallets CEO, Lorenzo Pellegrino, who is stepping into a strategic advisory role for Skrill Limited.