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

Q1: Tell me about your background 
Born and bred in Portlaoise, I am an Executive Director at Square and responsible for leading our European and International commercial operations, payments, and industry relations team. I joined Square in November 2019 and have over 20 years experience in financial services and payments, I spent six and a half of these as the General Manager of Ireland at Mastercard, prior to joining Square. 

Q2: Tell me about the beta announcement into Ireland - what products and services will this include? What business-sectors are you targeting?
We have publicly announced the launch of our Early Access Programme which brings Square’s suite of business tools to Irish businesses of all sizes. This marks the first time Square is available to Irish merchants, introducing our full ecosystem of products and services to offer all the tools that sellers need to start, run, grow and adapt.
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Space in Square’s Early Access Programme is limited and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Interested businesses across Ireland should visit squareup.com/IrelandEAP to learn more and secure their spot. Merchants who enroll in the Early Access Programme can get started with Square products in just days, with no long-term contracts or start-up fees, and qualify for free Square hardware.

The goal is to have as diverse a group of businesses as possible to make sure we have holistic and well-rounded feedback that will enable us to confidently and successfully launch our products for general availability in Ireland later in 2021. 

Q3: How long does Square plan to be in beta-phase for? When can we expect a full launch?
The plan is to offer our products for general availability in Ireland later in 2021 - hopefully soon, depending on a successful Early Access Programme.

Q4: How will Square’s presence and ecosystem impact Ireland’s business landscape?
Covid-19 has had a significant impact on small businesses and we think now is the right time to launch in Ireland with a product suite that will help them to recover faster. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve taken steps to support our sellers through free advice issued on our customer dashboard and by making available services designed to help them adapt to the changing market demands. We want to bring these benefits to Irish businesses and understand more about how the pandemic is impacting Irish businesses, so we know how best to support them.
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​Q5: Why have you chosen Ireland as your latest market launch?
We know that Ireland has a very entrepreneurial small business landscape, in 2018, SMEs generated over 46% of total turnover in the Irish business economy, while micro accounted for 91.9% of all enterprises. By launching our ecosystem of products in Ireland, Square can help meet demands and support businesses to grow and adapt. We also have our European HQ here in Dublin which made expanding here a natural choice for us. 

Q6: What makes Square different to its competitors?
There are multiple payment providers out there - but no other company offers what Square does. We’re the only comprehensive solution of our kind when you consider omnichannel selling across in-store and online, which is more important than ever due to the impact of the pandemic. Square has a suite of products that fully integrate to save businesses time and offer solutions to a multitude of problems, all in one place.

​Q7: How would you describe the culture, diversity, inclusiveness and ethos of Square.  Is it a competitive advantage when it comes to recruiting talent?
Lots of people talk about values and when I joined Square, I was genuinely looking for a company that had a strong ethos for why they existed and I don’t think there’s a more authentic brand when it comes to values and belief systems, particularly when it comes to the economic empowerment of businesses. This is reflected in the sheer diversity of talent at Square and the attitude we collectively hold of wanting to learn and having both the skill and the will to work with our sellers in the best way we can. 

When it comes to recruiting talent we do see this as a competitive advantage. We’re hiring all the time and currently have around 20 jobs live on our website. These include business development, customer success, finance, marketing, and software engineering, so across almost all functions here in Ireland. 

​Q8: At Fintech Ireland, we are all about the Fintech ecosystem.  Do you think that there will be opportunities to partner/collaborate with young, hungry and fast growing Irish fintech?
​At the moment we are laser-focused on ensuring that we have a successful beta phase and Early Access Programme, however the possibilities are endless when looking to the future.

Q9: We spoke about your background earlier, what are three bullet points of advice you’d give to your younger self (and budding fintech entrepreneurs out there?) 
The three bullet points I would give myself are:

• Authenticity is underrated: Doing something you enjoy for a living where you can stay true to yourself, and your own value system is probably more important than anything else 
• Focus on having a Growth Mindset: Openness to learning, making mistakes and stepping out of your comfort zone will pay dividends
• Calmness, patience and embracing problems trump anger, frustration and stress on most occasions!

​Q10: When Square invested $50mn in bitcoin, you said was the purpose was driven by ‘economic empowerment’. What does Square see as the economy of the future and what role do you expect it to play/
Our purpose of ‘economic empowerment’ is what we stand for, it’s what inspires us and connects us across business units, teams, offices and drives our mission. Over the course of Square’s history and its future, we’ll have many missions and each mission will eventually end. But each mission serves a greater ending purpose, which is to empower people to participate in the economy.  Read more on this point at  https://squareup.com/us/en/press/2020-bitcoin-investment

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Cold day to be outside talking about the hot topic of #bitcoin and #cryptoassets / #digitalassets for Fintech Ireland with Will Goodbody of RTE, who also interviews Henrik Andersson, CFA (CIO Apollo Capital) and Lory Kehoe (Adjunct Assistant Professor, Trinity Business School) about their thoughts on #crypto as an asset class and regulation.

I am seeing:

1) a ramp up in scam investments, riding the epic wave of the #BTC price increase aimed at luring people into the FOMO (fear of missing out) opportunities; and

2) the loss of sight of the 'democratisation of financial services' and decentralised ethos' of #crypto in favour of speculative nature of 'assets' like bitcoin.

Don't read my comments as being negative on decentralisation and distributed ledger technology; they are leading to many interesting cost effective and time efficient applications.

Rather be wary of the bitcoin salespeople whose interests have noting to do with the " purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash [that] would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution" heralded in the abstract of the Nakamoto paper.

Or put another way, 'don't lose sight of the forest for the trees'.

Linkedin Post here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6764935828859887616

And follow Fintech Ireland on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/9349449

Posted by Peter Oakes, Fintech Ireland  - ​https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteroakes

** Authorisation by Central Bank of Ireland of an Electronic Money Institution and a Payments Institution **

Our last post on additions to the Irish regulated fintech family of payment services firms and electronic money firms was back on 5 November 2020 when we released Version 3.0 of the 'Emoney & Payment Services Firms Authorised in Ireland Map' as at 2 November 2020.

Again thanks to CompliReg we have released an update to that Map, which now stands at Version 3.0.  The new joiners are OFX Payments Ireland Limited and BlueSnap Payment Services Ireland Limited. 

OFX Payments was authorised on 16 December 2020, and in addition to its authorisation to issue emoney it also secured payments services 3c, 4c, 5, and 6.  BlueSnap Payments received its payments institution authorisation on 23 December 2020 and is authorised to provide payment service 5. See below for a description of these payment services numbers*.

Both firms arrive in Ireland ahead of the end of the Brexit transition date from the UK where their UK affiliates are authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. OFX's global headquarters is in Sydney, Australia and BlueSnap was founded in Israel.

Welcome to Ireland OFX and Bluesnap.  We know that there are others soon to join the regulated fintech ecosystem in Ireland which are making their way through the Central Bank of Ireland authorisation pipeline!  

Those firms in the above Map which are indigenous to Ireland also appear on our bigger Fintech Ireland Map version 3.0 which you can find here. If you think you should be on the Fintech Ireland Map, complete our Survey.  Do it soon as version 4 of that Map is slated for release very shortly!

If you are looking to get authorised in Ireland as an emoney or payments firm, see these Authorisation Guides and feel free to contact us for a informative dialogue on the authorisation process.  We are chatting with about 4-5 firms a week.  The completion of the Brexit transition period has not cooled interest in Ireland as a home for regulated fintech!

* Payment Services:
3. Execution of payment transactions, including transfers of funds on a payment account with the user’s payment service provider or with another payment service provider ... (c). Execution of credit transfers, including standing orders
4. Execution of payment transactions where the funds are covered by a credit line for a payment service user ... (c). Execution of credit transfers, including standing orders
5. Issuing of payment instruments and/or acquiring of payment transactions
​6. Money remittance

RTE Radio 1 with Richard Curran (The Business) on the future of money and digital currencies.

​Click Here To Listen