Colm Lyon's fintech company is catching Fire, having processed some €4m worth of online transactions in the first four months of 2016
Just one year after selling Realex to Global Payments for €115m, Colm Lyon is once again on a roll as his new company, Fire Financial Services, has processed some €4m worth of transactions in the first four months of 2016.
Lyon started Realex Payments at the age of 37 after a high-flying career as a leading technologist at Ulster Bank.
Within 15 years, Realex was processing more than €28bn worth of payments on behalf of 12,500 clients worldwide and employed 200 people in Dublin.
In March last year Realex was acquired by Global Payments, an Atlanta-based payments giant, for €115m.
Lyon is now concentrating on his new company Fire Financial Services, which allows business and personal customers to open payment accounts online, each with its own IBAN or account number, and make transfers to and from any bank in the UK or the eurozone.
Fire is sparking a personal payments boom
The company has also released a new version of its app Pay with Fire for iOS and Android that allows users to tap, snap or type their card details and load funds into their Fire account. This allows them to also share requests for payments with their social groups on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and by email.
“We are trying to create a wonderful user experience for banking services,” Lyon said.
“Customers love the simplicity of tapping their contactless card against their NFC-enabled device to load funds into their Fire account.
“Opening up the sharing function for payment requests is also perfect for group requests”, added Lyon.
So far, 250 businesses have signed up for the platform and more than 50,000 payments are being processed every month.
It has processed more than €4m in the first four months of 2016.
“Fire has reached a key milestone in the creation of next-generation banking services as we now have live businesses also accepting Fire as a payment method,” Lyon said.
