Banco Santander hires Apple payment vet as part of tech refresh

Trish Burgess, who helped lead Apple Card and Apple Pay, will lead P2P payments at Banco Santander, which is spending $22 billion on digital projects over the next four years.

At Apple, Burgess provided direction for the launch of the Apple Card, working with project, engineering, marketing and operations teams at Apple and Goldman Sachs. In her newly created role at Banco Santander, the London-based Burgess will lead the strategy and development of P2P payments worldwide as well as create new payment services.

Burgess also helped lead Apple Pay’s launch in Europe and Asia, enabling its adoption on e-commerce platforms as well as increased its in-store merchant adoption. Before joining Apple, Burgess was vice president of business development at PayNearMe.

“We know that innovation is powered by the most talented people, and we welcome Trish’s wealth of payment experience,” Chirag Patel, global head of Santander digital payments at Banco Santander, said in a press release.

At Santander Burgess will be part of the bank’s global and digital team, which includes executives from Google, Amazon, PayPal, Facebook and Netflix. Burgess will report to Patel, who joined Santander 2018 after leaving a post as head of emerging payments and innovation at Amazon.