Full coverage: Fintech

Digital payments company CleverCards has just acquired the business of ExpendiaSmart and a €10m funding round will close within weeks. But CEO Kealan Lennon is already thinking about the next acquisition and a follow-on €50m funding round.

Noel Moran devised Prepaid Financial Services on his kitchen table, hoping to just make enough to cover his bills. Eleven years later he sold the company to EML payments for €327m. That seemed to be the end of the story. Until a letter from the Central Bank of Ireland arrived at EML Payments this week.

Stripe's Dublin office has just filed annual accounts revealing the central role Ireland has come to play in its expanding business outside the US. Just before the pandemic provided a huge boost to its business, it also posted its first ever Irish profit.

The latest funding round secured by the world's fastest-growing online payments provider brings its valuation close to $100 billion. The Silicon Valley business founded by two Irish brothers plans to expand in Dublin.

Wayflyer is growing quickly by financing small to mid-sized e-commerce companies. Last month, QED Investors, which has backed 13 unicorns to date, invested in the Irish company. Is Wayflyer a $1 billion business of the future?

Karl Deeter, who has raised €1m in funding for his online mortgage and insurance solution fintech, talks to Sean Keyes about the future of mortgage applications and the doomed future of incumbent banks.

Professor Pinar Ozcan is an Oxford University expert on innovation and fintech. She sets out why the banks are vulnerable to disruption by fintech, why the fintechs have struggled to capitalise, and why there's an opportunity for a new type of company to step in and dominate the industry.

Fidelma McGuirk had enough of Dublin corporate life and decided to head with her family to the west of Ireland. There, she founded and built her business from the ground up. Payslip is now used by employers all around the world.

Starting with a tax refund business, Fexco has built a global financial services empire. However, it fears new rules arising from Brexit could have adverse consequences, and it is now asking government to remedy it.

Irish banks should embrace the trend toward higher degree of automation in management of clients' services and accounts, opening up the sector to fintech solutions rather than waiting for them to eat the banks' lunch.