Kealan Lennon is CEO of CleverCards, a business that issues customisable digital Mastercards for employee benefits payouts and employee business expenses.
What are your main priorities and goals in your role?
In order to ensure that the entire organisation is in line with the direction of the business, my main priorities revolve around driving strategy and ensuring profitable growth, while aligning the company with the overall business objectives. Alongside this, I aim to foster strong leadership and coordination across CleverCards’ staff to allow the team to execute this vision effectively. Through close collaboration and aligning individual goals with our long-term growth strategy, I ensure that everyone remains motivated and focused on delivering results.
What are your biggest challenges as CEO?
As CEO, one of the biggest challenges I face is managing investment constraints while pursuing sustainable, focused growth. We operate in a large, competitive market, and my role requires a careful balancing act between resource allocation and capturing market share. This requires disciplined planning and resource allocation, ensuring each investment is conducive to meaningful progress. I also ensure the team aligns with our long-term vision.
Another challenge has been understanding and adapting to market demand. It’s essential our product is tailored and evolving to customer needs as well as staying focused on our strategic objectives – many startups develop products for markets that don’t exist, so listening to our business customers and ensuring we’re addressing real needs is crucial to our success.
What have been your highlights in business over the past year?
In the space of a year, CleverCards has become the market leader for Employee Benefits payouts in Ireland, helping hundreds of businesses to incentivise and reward their employees while saving time and energy on onerous administrative processes.
Another major milestone was Pluxee’s minority investment in CleverCards earlier this year, a serious endorsement of our vision and strategy. Pluxee, the second largest employee benefits company globally, plans to leverage our platform for their customers globally. This strengthens our mission to revolutionise digital banking and payments for businesses worldwide.
Where do you want your business/brand to be this time next year?
CleverCards was built by accountants, for accountants, giving us unique insight into the challenges businesses face with burdensome expense-claiming processes and new reporting requirements. We understand these pain points and work to reduce this administrative burden, empowering businesses and employees to regain control of their finances.
Our ultimate goal is to remove the outdated concept of employees using their personal expenses to cover business costs. We want to eliminate the need for individual expense claims, often subject to errors and long delays, in place of seamless and digital business payments. We believe that with this approach, we can become the market leaders in the sector.
What new trends are emerging in your industry?
Embedded finance will continue to grow. We have already seen a massive increase in the adoption of digital over physical in the payments space, and we hope to see more businesses embracing this transition.
What are the challenges facing the industry going forward?
We see significant opportunities for disruption in the digital banking space for businesses. Incumbent banks are constrained by outdated infrastructure, core banking systems and a lack of card-issuing and payment processing capabilities. This is where CleverCards has a competitive advantage.
The shift we’re seeing in financial services reflects the changes we witnessed in the music and movies industry, where branch networks gave way to digital platforms like Apple Music, Spotify and Netflix – we anticipate a similar transformation in financial services.
As the industry is constantly evolving, trust is the single most important factor – not technology, branding, or cheaper offers, but ensuring regulation and compliance are the top priority. Companies that understand this will emerge as long-term winners in the rapidly changing market.
Are there any major changes you would like to see in your sector?
A complete switch to digital. Data shows that over 50% of consumers are using digital wallets rather than traditional payment methods. Globally, financial inclusion will accelerate as governments are using platforms to issue digital cards to citizens for things such as energy and social welfare payouts, eliminating fraud in the process.
As an employer are you finding any skill gaps in the market?
It is difficult to pinpoint any holes at the moment and we are incredibly impressed by the standard of applicants in Ireland across the board. Our rapid growth is a testament to Ireland’s thriving startup ecosystem and burgeoning fintech industry. While talent is plentiful in Ireland, both the housing crisis and the high cost of living present challenges, making it difficult to attract and retain employees to opportunities in Irish cities.
How do you keep your team/staff motivated?
Success has been the most powerful motivator for our team. As the company grows, so do the careers of our employees, creating a shared sense of achievement. Empowering our team to push toward a common goal—both in terms of the value they deliver to customers and the personal financial rewards they gain—has had a significant effect on morale.
We also pride ourselves on integrating empathy, flexibility and sensitivity into CleverCards’ culture. These values contribute to a positive work environment, ensuring that each individual feels valued and motivated to contribute to the company’s success.
What is the best advice you have been given, or would give, in business?
Understanding markets, understanding customers, and really understanding who the customer is that you’re trying to serve. What is the actual job that they’re trying to achieve? How are they achieving that today? These are important questions to ask ourselves that will determine the success of businesses and the products we’re trying to sell.
Additionally, talking to the customer and understanding what the pain points are going to set you apart from the competition. As Henry Ford famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” True persistence is what will lead you to success.
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