Paysafe Group

London Based Payment Solution Provider Paysafe Hired Philip McHugh as its New CEO

PaySafePaysafe Group plc, a multinational digital payment solutions provider based out of London has hired industry veteran Philip McHugh to serve as the firm’s new CEO. Philip will be taking over the role of Chief Executive Officer from Joel Leonoff who is the founder and current CEO of the firm. Philip’s role as CEO comes into effect starting June 24, 2019 in the firm’s head office located in London. Meanwhile, Joel Leonoff who resigns from role of CEO will move on to become vice chairman of board of directors of his firm. Despite resigning from his role of CEO, Joel will continue to remain closely involved in any and all developments regarding Paysafe’s corporate strategy. Joel founded the firm back in 1997 and has since held various roles of key significance over the course of last decade. Aside from the role of CEO and President of the firm which he has held since 2008, he has also served in roles of Chief Operating Office and Chief Financial Officer for nearly twenty years.

Philip who will join Paysafe family late next month is an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in international banking and payments sector. Philip McHugh is currently serving as the Head of Merchant Solutions Division at Total System Services Inc., in their New York office. Philip has held this role at TSYS for more than 2 years now but will be terminating all professional ties with the firm by next month as he moves to London to take up his new role as Paysafe’s CEO. However, Philip is no stranger to UK market as he has held high level posts in major financial firms in London ahead of his tenure at TSYS. Before his current role at TSYS, Philip served UK financial service giant Barclays for a period of 12 years from November 2006 to April 2017. Philip joined Barclays as Finance Director of Global Retail and Commercial Banking back in 2006 and was promoted to CFO of Barclaycard in 2010 post which he was promoted yet again in 2013 as CEO of Barclaycard Business Solutions – a role which he held until he left the firm in 2017. Prior to his tenure at Barclays, Philip also served Citigroup for nearly 8 years during which he handled the firm’s credit card division in Brazil and also oversaw the operations of Latin American region.

When speaking about Philip’s appointment as CEO, Stuart Harvey – Chairman of Paysafe commented, “We are delighted that somebody of Philip’s calibre has accepted the role of CEO for Paysafe. His relentless focus on serving the customer, and his proven ability to drive operational excellence within complex financial organizations, has led to strong results throughout his career.  This track record combined with his visionary approach will be invaluable as we advance the Company’s corporate strategy”. Speaking about his decision to join Paysafe, Philip commented, “I am truly honoured to become part of the Paysafe story. Paysafe has built an incredibly unique payments business that is scaled, diverse, highly specialized and frankly hard to beat. The opportunity to continue to invest in, and leverage Paysafe’s differentiated payments assets, as well as identify new areas of growth while working with a highly focused and energized team, is a very exciting one.  I look forward to meeting the team and helping to take Paysafe to the next level of growth and scale”.

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