If you need assistance with an emoney or payments authorisation or an account information service provider registration application, check out Fintech Ireland and CompliReg's handy authorisation guides at https://fintechireland.com/fintech-authorisations.html

On 14 March 2022 (Central Bank of Ireland run date 15 March 2022), Ireland authorised Gemini Payments Limited.  This was the first such authorisation of an emoney firm since 27 October 2020.

Ireland is now home to 18 authorised electronic money institutions, 20 authorised payment institutions and 4 standalone account information service providers. We have updated our regulated fintech Map to version 6.0 where we showcase these firms.

Our Peter Oakes spoke with Charlie Taylor of the Irish Times on the authorisation of the Winklevoss twins Irish licence and wider digital asset issues facing Ireland.

In the article Peter Oakes said:

• an interesting play for Gemini in Ireland could be institutional wealth management and custody. Many large financial institutions, especially US banks operating in Ireland, have a strong interest in digital assets for both themselves and their clients. They generally segregate their trading and investment activities from the very specialised but fairly lucrative pricing and custodial responsibilities of digital assets.
• he expects to see Gemini to eye up a role in servicing Ireland’s €5.4 trillion assets under administration in the IFSC in the years to come.
• while there remains challenges about the perception of Ireland being an effective home for regulated digital assets, the arrival of Gemini as well as the existing Irish business of Coinbase help set the groundwork, and attraction, for other international and hopefully indigenous fintechs to follow bolstering employment in cutting edge technology and innovation.
• he expects Gemini will complement its new fintech licence with an Irish crypto asset registration to replicate its UK and international services.

Visit our Fintech Ireland Maps page for more information about the fintech and regtech companies we map.

Links:

1) Irish Times Article 20 March 2022: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/winklesvoss-twins-secure-irish-e-money-licence-for-gemini-payments-1.4831606
2) Linkedin Post 20 March 2022: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peteroakes_paymentservices-facebook-cryptoasset-activity-6911588283806277632-GaM0

The above image is a curation of the Fintech Ireland and Central Bank of Ireland data. 

Link: 

• Access Intersystems Research Here

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Other Relevant Material: 

• Access Fintech Ireland Maps Here
• Access the Fintech Ireland Maps Event Material Here

Data has Become the Biggest Technical Challenge for 81% of Fintechs Worldwide
Issues with data prevent fintechs from improving service offering and adopting next-gen technologies according to new survey of over 500 decision-makers

ETON, UK., 26th January 2022 – Eighty-one percent of global fintechs cite data issues as the biggest technical challenge they face, with almost three-quarters (74%) of fintechs whose solutions are in the early adoption phase and almost all (85%) of those with an established offering or whose products have large scale adoption see it as their biggest technical challenge.

According to research commissioned by InterSystems, a creative data technology provider dedicated to helping customers solve the most critical scalability, interoperability, and speed problems, these struggles are split between leveraging data for analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (41%) and connecting to customers’ applications and data / legacy systems (40%).

Security was also found to be a significant challenge for 40% of respondents, followed by cloud support / multi-cloud deployment and administration (39%).
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The survey of over 500 senior decision-makers at fintechs across 12 countries, including the UK and Ireland, North and South America, and Australia and Southeast Asia, found that cloud tops the list for over half (51%) of respondents adopting new technologies in the next 12 months. This is followed closely by plans to invest in data management technology (48%), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) (45%) and data fabric technology (42%).

“While the majority of fintechs currently face significant data challenges, it’s encouraging to see many of them are looking to implement data management technologies like data fabrics to overcome them”, said Mike Hom, Head of Financial Services Solutions, InterSystems. This is an important step for both established and emerging fintechs, as getting their data in order will ensure any new data-related initiatives they undertake, such as implementing AI or ML, prove effective and worthwhile. By picking the right data management solutions, fintechs can also gain access to those more advanced technologies and analytics capabilities that are so desirable.”

The levels of investment into these technologies do differ in relation to the maturity of the organisation, with the more established fintechs focusing more on data management (49%), cloud (54%) and data fabric initiatives (44%). Meanwhile, those fintechs whose offerings are still in the early adoption phase are more likely to prioritise investments in AI and ML (51%). This indicates that more established organisations are focused on overcoming the data issues they are facing before considering implementing new technologies like AI/ML, which rely on data.

These investments are being driven by a number of different initiatives:

• 55% said customer demand / improve competitiveness
• 52% want to improve scalability and reliability
• 48% are hoping to increase agility
• 47% want to enable better integration with customers and third parties

Rabih Ramadi, Head of Financial Services and Insurance at Unqork, an enterprise-grade no-code platform, commented, “Investing and integrating with the next generation data management technologies such as InterSystems is a top priority for us to ensure that our applications offer vital bidirectional, real-time data integration with our customers’ legacy systems. With such capabilities, data is no longer seen as a challenge but rather a critical differentiator empowering our customers to innovate faster to meet their business goals.”
However, it was found that a number of fintechs still face barriers to implementing new technology, with a lack of flexibility within their current environment to integrate new technology (54%) and a lack of internal expertise / skills (51%) cited as the largest.

Looking at their offering, 39% of fintechs surveyed offer a cloud-based managed service available in multiple public clouds and almost a quarter (23%) offer a hybrid application.

This prevalence of cloud is despite 39% of respondents previously saying cloud support is one of their top technical challenges. This is a problem felt across the board from start-ups to established players, which could point to issues such as vendor lock-in, lack of real-time cloud availability and a shortage of expertise in security, cost-management, data-locality and integration of services.

“While the complexity of cloud and its costs are major challenges for fintechs, especially as they grow, if they take the right approach to cloud deployments, these organisations can reap significant rewards and deliver those back to their end customers,” added Hom. “Boosting training and knowledge, along with building their offerings on cloud-first solutions that avoid vendor lock-in and which can be implemented within a hybrid environment will allow fintechs to increase agility, scalability, and security and ensure that their solutions appeal to a wider customer base.”


About InterSystems
Established in 1978, InterSystems is the leading provider of technology for critical data initiatives in the healthcare, higher education & research, finance, manufacturing, and supply chain sectors, including production applications at most of the top global banks. Its cloud-first data platforms solve interoperability, speed, and scalability problems for large organisations around the globe. InterSystems is committed to excellence through its award-winning, 24×7 support for customers and partners in more than 80 countries. Privately held and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, InterSystems has 25 offices worldwide. For more information, please visit InterSystems.com/Financial    

Most recent Newsletter November 2021 (11.01) - https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=048c7ac579d549ef4cf8ee9ea&id=37b09a37ca 

Past Newsletters - https://us13.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=048c7ac579d549ef4cf8ee9ea&id=d1e2a00d88

Fintech Ireland's Peter Oakes has again being recognised as a leading fintech consultant for 2021 following his listing in 2020. 

Chambers and Partners released its Fintech Rankings for Ireland in January 2021.  Peter is the only individual / boutique professional services firm (CompliReg) to be ranked along side some of Ireland's largest consulting firms.

In research carried out by Chambers and Partners, Peter's clients and fintech industry experts informed the researchers that:

• Peter is high-profile, he has very strong governance capabilities and is very good for a regulated FinTech company.
• his area of expertise is in licensed applications with the Central Bank. He can explain what is required in black and white from the regulator but also what is left unsaid.
• Peter would be my first port of call for any FinTech looking to obtain an e-money licence.
• Peter's reputation really helps; he's top of the list of local Dublin-based regulatory consultants.

Peter Oakes is the Founder of fintech networks Fintech Ireland (www.fintechireland.com), Fintech UK (www.fintechuk.com) and US TechFin (www.USTechFin.com). Peter is a non-executive director of regulated fintech companies in the payments, e-money and MiFID sectors. He is founder of leading fintech consulting firm CompliReg (CompliReg.com) and is an adviser and mentor to fintech and regtech startups and scaleups. Peter is a consultant to Clark Hill in Ireland and Kerman & Co in the UK, which is supporting the Fintech UK project.


See Peter's entry at Chambers & Partners here
See Peter's entry alongside larger consulting brands here
See details of Peter's 2020 recognition here