Back in 2002 the Business Post (Connected Magazine) issued its inaugural 'The Fintech 15' by (Charlie Taylor).  Earlier this year the team issued 'The 100 Most Powerful People in Tech in Ireland' (Charlie Taylor).

Donal MacNamee has just issued "The Fintech 15: meet the women shaping the Irish revolution" and "The trailblazers", celebrating their achievements.

To honour this fantastic selection of people, Fintech Ireland has created a collage showing all of them in one image above. More power to all of you! As we know - there is no such thing as an overnight success!​

Here is the list of the Fintech 15!

• Andrea Reynolds, chief executive and founder, Swoop
• Nicola O'Brien, Monzo Bank
• Andrea Linehan, Chief Marketing Officer
• Joanna Murphy, chief executive, Taxback and Sprintax
• Mai Santamaria FCA Santamaria, head of financial advisory, Department of Finance Ireland
• Leigh-anne Cotter, vice-president of customer growth, TrueLayer
• Eimear O'Brien, partner, global regulatory, Hogan Lovells
• Ciara O'Grady, regulatory partner and fintech lead, Deloitte
• Susan O’Neill, chief executive and co-founder, Sulu
• Lesley Tully, founder, Penny FS / This is Penny
• Deborah Hutton, partner and principal, DEH LAW; co-founder, ReClosure (Propto)
• Ciara Walsh, co-founder and chief marketing officer, JustTip Technologies
• Miriam Dunne, head of innovation and stakeholder engagement, Central Bank of Ireland
• Alison McMurtrie, founder and chief executive, iDunn Consulting
• Karen Cohalan, head of fintech, financial and business services, Enterprise Ireland

And here are the trailblazers!

• Sinead Fitzmaurice, CEO, TransferMate Global Payments
• Fidelma McGuirk, CEO, Payslip
• Ruth McCarthy is head of compliance, risk and policy at Fexco Group
• Geraldine Dautun, founder, AQMetrics 
• Elaine Deehan, special project manager, Monzo Bank. 

Links:

25 October 2024: The Fintech 15: meet the women shaping the Irish revolution:  https://www.businesspost.ie/tech-news/the-fintech-15-meet-the-women-shaping-the-irish-revolution/

25 October 2024: Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peteroakes_irishfintech-activity-7255608937754890243-Wb2B

27 August 2022: The Fintech 15: the people making waves in one of Ireland’s leading tech sectors https://www.businesspost.ie/tech/the-fintech-15-the-people-making-waves-in-one-of-irelands-leading-tech-sectors/

Delighted to be issuing updated Fintech Ireland Maps.  Would like to also announce, with special thanks, Project Foundry for their sponsorship of the Fintech Ireland Indigenous Map.  Thanks for your support guys. As a special thank you we have recognised them on Version 12 of the Regulated Fintech Map.  Read more about Project Foundry in our announcement here.

We last issued the Regulated Fintech Map and the Emoney & Payments Map on 19 July 2024 (version 11). At that time there were 75 such firms showcased on the Regulated Fintech Map.  Joining version 12 of that Map are:

• Pitchedit Limited trading as Shuttle which achieved authorisation as a crowdfunding firm on 28 August 2024 under Article 12 of Regulation (EU) 2020/1503.
• Gleman Software Development trading as Bullet, which achieved registration on 3 September 2024 as an open-banking firm under Regulation 25(1)(b) of the European Union (Payment Services) Regulations 2018.

Bullet also joins version 21 of the Emoney and Payments Map by virtue of it being an account information services provider.

Fintech Ireland is delighted to welcome both firms to the ever-growing Regulated Fintech Map (Version 12) and the VASP Map (version 8).  Thanks to CompliReg which supports firms in the fintech industry.

Congratulations to both for increasing the ranks of Irish regulated fintech.  

Shuttle, founded by the infectious Robert Halligan and Scott Ashmore, is an alternative investment platform providing investors with access to private market investment opportunities through a subscription service. Both Robert and Scott are directors of Shuttle, which was incorporated in June 2021.  When we spoke to Scott and Rob recently, they informed us "We're really excited to get authorised by the CBI and appreciate all the support Fintech Ireland have given us these last two years".

Bullet is all-in-one toolkit built on a finance platform.  Its sole director is Peter Connor.  It was incorporated way back in July 2020 before there was such a word as ‘fintech’!

At the same time we bid farewell to CUSOP (Payments) which surrendered its authorisation as a payments institution on 13 September 2024.

CUSOP (Payments) established in August 2011 was set up as a shared services entity to provide electronic payment services to participant credit unions and is owned by the CUSOP Trust on behalf of the participating credit unions.  While it made a loss for the year ending 2023 in the amount of €774K and saw a drop in the number of credit unions which it served, the fintech processed €25.8mn in payments in 2023 up from €24.1 in the previous year.  The associated value processed grew to a new record of €7.8bn up 10% from €7.1bn in 2022. 

So why did the fintech wind down its business and withdrew its authorisation?

This is owed to the outcome of the due diligence phase of a merger process involving CUSOP and Payac when it become clear that the proposed merger could not proceed as originally envisaged.  It did not help that there was a decreasing number of credit unions availing of CUSOP’s services and other considerations.

Peter Oakes, a former Central Bank enforcement director and founder of Fintech Ireland, explains how the global IT outages from last Friday could still impact businesses and customers this week.

Click on the above images to listen to the interview.

Back up at RTE's website here - https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22417382/

Ireland is now home to at least 75 regulated fintechs with the registrations of both Foris DAX Global Limited (aka Crypto.com) and Sors Digital Assets Limited.  The two companies were registered by the Central Bank of Ireland under the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010 as virtual asset service providers.  To remind, VASPs are not authorised but registered to provide their services.

Linkedin Post here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peteroakes_cryptoasset-virtualasset-micar-activity-7219828976863641601-fNxw

Fintech Ireland is delighted to welcome both firms to the ever-growing Regulated Fintech Map (Version 11) and the VASP Map (version 8).  Thanks to CompliReg and MiCA Ready which support firms in the  in the #cryptoasset / #virtualasset industry.

By the way, did you know that today (19 July 2024) is the second anniversary of the very first registration of a VASP?  That honour belongs to Gemini Intergalactic Europe Limited which was registered on 19 July two years ago.  Happy anniversary!

This registration of Crypto.com on 7 June 2024 and Sors Digital Assets on 16 July 2024 increases the pool of regulated fintech in Ireland to at least 75, comprised of:

* 27 authorised electronic money institutions
* 22 payments institutions,
* 6 standalone open banking firms,
* 15 VASP, and
* 5 crowdfunding services providers.

Those who read the recent Authorisation and Gatekeeping Report issued by the Central bank of Ireland might recall:

• that as at 31 December 2023 there were 14 applicants for a VASP registration in the pipeline as at that date.  Obviously deduct 2, and that means if there have been no withdrawals and no new applications, we might see a further 12 firms become registered before year’s end.  If that is the case the Central Bank will have its work cut out for itself dealing with potentially 27 MiCAR applications. Of course, it would be wise to assume that further companies have applied for registration since the start of this year.
• the average number of days taken to register a VASP is 530 calendar days and is largely driven by time taken by the applicants to respond to queries raised during the assessment. A significant number of firms have withdrawn from the registration process. 

According to Companies Registration Office Records, Sors Digital Assets is a shareholder (32.67%) in Fortuna Digital Custody Ltd which was registered as a VASP by the Central Bank of Ireland earlier this year on 9 May 2024.  Sors Digital Assets is owned by Brian Elders (55%) and Stephen Browne (45%).  Brian Elders is a director of both Sors Digital Assets and Fortuna Custody Ltd.  Sors Digital Assets had net assets of €769K as at 31 December 2023.  Stephen Browne is another director of Sors Digital Assets.

​Foris DAX Global Limited is wholly owned by  Foris Dax Holdings Ltd.  Its directors are Mariana Dinkova Gospodinova, Rafael De Marco E Melo and Antonio Alvarez Lorenzo.  Within the Crypto.com group, Mariana serves as EVP Operations & GM Europe; Rafael is co-founder and CFO; and Antonio is Group Chief Compliance Officer.  Crypto.com's VASP registered operations made a small overall profit (comprehensive income) of €71.4K in the year to 31 December 2022 well down on the €3.120M profit for the previous year.  The company's net assets as at 31 December 2022 were €3.2M.   

We wish both Crypto.com and Sors Digital Assets the very best success for their future endeavours.
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