Paysafe Hires Mastercard Exec As Director

Paysafe Group has hired Mastercard’s Walt Macnee as an independent, non-executive director.

Macnee currently serves as vice chairman of Mastercard where he has led multiple global growth initiatives, with a focus on financial inclusion for the billions of people around the world without access to basic financial services. Macnee founded the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and is a director of the Mastercard Impact Fund.

“Walt brings vast payments leadership experience to the role combined with a proven entrepreneurial track record of developing new business in underserved parts of the world,” Paysafe President and Chief Executive Officer Joel Leonoff said in a press release. “We all look forward to working with him.”

“Walt’s appointment completes a significant reorientation and strengthening of the Paysafe board in the last year. He is a highly regarded leader in the global payments industry and his background complements the wealth of experience we have on the team. He’ll be a great asset,” added Stuart C. Harvey, Jr., chairman of the Paysafe board of directors.

Macnee also served as president of Mastercard’s International Markets, building all aspects of the company’s issuance and acceptance businesses in over 200 countries. Before that, he was president of the Americas Region and served as president of Mastercard Canada from 2001 to 2004. He was also an executive vice president of Cards and Collections at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and spent 18 years with Toronto Dominion Bank.

In addition, he currently serves as the chair of Convergence Finance, chair of the Queen’s University Centre for Social Impact, chair of Antibe Therapeutics and chair of the digital platform “Yroo.”

“I have watched Paysafe notch up multiple successes over these past years, reinforcing its position and standing in the digital payments industry, and Joel and the board of directors quite rightly continue to have very bold ambitions for the business,” said Macnee. “I’m excited to be joining the team at this time and using my insights and experience to help steer that accelerated growth strategy.”