Ireland’s rapidly growing fintech sector is characterised by a culture of innovation, which has led to the establishment of many globally successful firms.
Here is the final instalment in the Business & Finance Fintech Ireland digital index, featuring companies from M-Z.
#Fintech17
MasterCard / Garry Lyons
Garry Lyons is chief innovation officer at MasterCard, where he leads the group’s digital payments and MasterCard Labs units. He is also on the company’s management committee.
He joined Mastercard following a spell as CEO of payment solutions firm Orbiscom, which was acquired by the credit card giant in 2008. He previously worked in senior positions in Cognotec, Credo and ICL, is a non-executive director of Datalex, and has a degree in computer applications from DCU.
This year he spoke on revolutionising agriculture for economic stability and growth at the World Economic Forum at Davos.
MoneyMate / Paul Fawsitt
Paul Fawsitt is CEO of MoneyMate, having joined the group in 1995 and taken the helm in 2005. He is a graduate of the Leadership 4 Growth Programme at Stanford University, and co-founded Insurance Link in the 1980s.
MoneyMate offers regulatory data management and data exchange services to asset management firms and institutional investors via three products: Accudelta Regulatory Data Management, Silverfinch Regulatory Data Exchange, and Longboat Analytics.
One4all Group / Michael Dawson
Former senator Michael Dawson founded the Gift Voucher Group in 2001. It is now a majority-owned subsidiary of An Post and is responsible for the One4all gift card, active in Ireland, the UK and Malta.
Dawson has won a series of industry accolades and awards.
One4all is accepted in over 8,000 outlets in Ireland and is available in 1,100 post offices and online. The group also works with 6,000 companies in Ireland and the UK to create employee reward and incentive schemes, and also runs the One4all Christmas club whereby staff set aside money throughout the year to prepare for the festive season.
PayPal / Maeve Dorman
Maeve Dorman is head of global operations for PayPal EMEA, a role she has held since September last year when she succeeded Louise Phelan. She is responsible for 2,000 employees in teams based in Dublin, Dundalk and Berlin.
Dorman joined the online payments firm around ten years ago, and previously worked in ClientLogics and Gateway. Dorman has a particular interest in corporate social responsibility, supporting women in business, and entrepreneurs.
She has served as senior manager of business and technical support with PayPal, which separated from eBay two years ago.
In March the company announced its Q1 results, raising full-year guidance and booking a revenue growth of 17% to almost $3bn.
Payzone Group / Mike Maloney
Mike Maloney is CEO of Payzone Group. He has held senior roles at major corporations for over 12 years, including a role as chief operations officer at British Telecom Ireland from 2004 to 2008.
He also served as executive chairman of Eurocommerce Payment Solutions between 2002 and 2004.
Payzone allows consumers to pay for a range of services including household bills, mobile top-up, parking and toll-road usage. The company is based at Sandyford Industrial Estate in south Dublin.
PerfectCard / Nikki Evans
Nikki Evans is CEO of PerfectCard Europe, which she founded in 2006. The company offers a number of payment card solutions – including PerfectCentre, a gift card product for shopping centres; PerfectIncentive, incentives for employees and/or customers; and PerfectCard, tools for payments such as grants.
Educated at the Irish Management Institute with an MBA from London Business School, she has worked as a software developer at Friends First. The company is based in Co Wicklow and uses the MasterCard platform.
Plynk / Charles Dowd
Charles Dowd is CEO of Plynk, which he co-founded in 2015. A Trinity College Dublin mathematics graduate, he has served in numerous senior roles at Facebook, which he joined in 2010 and left as product manager in 2014.
He has also worked as a software development at IBM and in various other companies in Ireland and abroad.
Plynk is a money-messaging app available on iOS and Android, enabling users to access a virtual MasterCard along with security and messaging features.
Pramerica / Ciaran Harvey
Ciaran Harvey is senior managing director of Pramerica Systems Ireland. An RTC Letterkenny, University of Ulster and Queen’s University Belfast graduate, Harvey is a veteran of the Prudential Financial group, parent of Pramerica.
The company serves Pramerica with business and technology services and was founded in 2000, growing from 100 employees to over 1,300 and becoming one of the biggest employers in the north-west via its ever-expanding Letterkenny base.
Rubicoin / Emmet Savage
Emmet Savage’s passion is the stock market and it was this love for the investment markets that drove him to co-found Rubicoin, which offers individuals the basic ingredients of successful investing.
The company was founded in 2013, Savage having served a lengthy stint at investment community The Motley Fool. He is a DCU physics, IMI finance, and TCD business strategy graduate.
“At Rubicoin, we believe that investing is for everyone,” the company says. “We also believe that investing is one of the best ways to shape your financial future. That’s why we want to help you take control by making it easy to start investing for yourself.”
Senddr / Malcolm Lynch
Malcolm Lynch is co-founder and director of Senddr, which has focused on providing e-invoicing solutions but then expanded into secure document processing and transmission services.
The company is now part of AMCS group, which is a supplier of integrated software and vehicle technology for 1,500 customers in the waste, recycling and material resources industries.
Lynch is now global head of platform connectivity at AMCS, and has amassed senior experience as a financial systems consultant at Google, a business analyst at Symantec, and financial systems analyst at Motorola. He is a Liverpool John Moores University graduate.
Sentenial / Sean Fitzgerald
Sean Fitzgerald founded Sentenial in 2003. A TCD science graduate, he has previously served in senior management in the global microelectronics and specialty chemicals industries.
The company provides cloud-based payment management services to corporate originators and to banks, and is headquartered at Maynooth Business Campus with offices in Brussels, London, Paris and Amsterdam.
It is particularly focused on SEPA payment technology, and counts Barclays, Bank of Ireland, Western Union and Permanent TSB as clients.
State Street / Brian McCabe
Brian McCabe is head of EMEA product and innovation at State Street. He has served in several roles at the financial services institution over the years, and has also worked for Colonial First State, Bank of Ireland Securities Services, and HSBC Security Services.
State Street entered the Irish market and now has 2,500 employees here. Its EMEA operations have a headcount of 10,000, and Irish operations are based in Dublin, Drogheda, Kilkenny and Naas.
Taxback Group / Terry Clune
Terry Clune founded Taxback.com while working in Germany as a TCD student, giving up his construction job and working on a plan to reclaim taxes owed to him. He is now CEO of a wider Taxback Group with a global presence of 23 offices in 24 countries.
Clune is also founder and chairman of ConnectIreland, which encourages overseas companies to locate in Ireland, and co-founder and chairman of B2B fintech solution TransferMate Global Payments.
He also has experience on voluntary bodies such as the Global Irish Economic Forum and St Patrick’s Festival.
Touchtech Payments / Niall Hogan
Niall Hogan is head of products at financial payment authentication firm Touchtech Payments. Hogan has previously served as a software engineer at SwiftQueue and program manager at Microsoft.
The DCU Alpha-headquartered Touchtech offers authentication such as facial recognition and fingerprinting, and as an Enterprise Ireland high-potential start-up (HPSU) it has achieved international growth and made jobs announcements.
TransferMate / Sinead Fitzmaurice
Sinead Fitzmaurice is co-founder of TransferMate Global Payments, a subsidiary of the Taxback Group, where she also serves as CFO. TransferMate is a currency settlement network that allows companies to make high-speed, low-cost cross-border transfers.
Fitzmaurice was previously group financial controller at Venner International, where she played a key part in the group’s Singapore Stock Exchange IPO, and rose to become senior manager in a career at PwC between 1994-2004. She is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.
Volteneo / Keith Harrington
Keith Harrington is founder and CEO of Volteneo, with over 15 years’ experience in the financial technology sector. He established the company in March 2013, building a software-as-a-service product that delivers payment solutions to business via a team with a particular emphasis on payment technology, software development, EU regulation and finance.
The company is headquartered at Athlone Institute of Technology and specialises in SWIFT and SEPA solutions.
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