Colm Lyon is standing in a conference room in the Dublin office of Arthur Cox at the end of 2001 pitching his fledgling business to potential investors. The surroundings give Lyon and his business a polish and professionalism that defies the reality of a youthful start-up. In truth, he has borrowed and bartered and cajoled his payments business from the ground up. Now, it is time to start paying back on some of the promises, so he sets about raising funds through the old Business Expansion Scheme, which offered small-time investors a tax break in return for backing an indigenous…

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