Gary Conroy, Realex: "For us this is just the start of the journey"

Can you provide our readers with some insights into the company’s vision, history and mission?

Realex was founded in 2000. Colm Lyon, the company`s CEO, goes by the vision of helping businesses sell online. When Realex was founded, it was a greenfield situation in Ireland, a market where the company started its operations and where it recorded a notable growth by helping more businesses sell online. Presently, there is a 60% revenue coming from the UK, our next market. One of our most important clients is Global Payments. And, in short, our core vision is really about providing online merchants with both the technology and the customer service.

There is a lot of buzz around disruptive technologies and the payments industry. What is your perspective on the future developments in the payments industry? Where do you see it going?

At Money 2020 event I attended a session called “Planet of the APIs” which referred to APIs around banking and payments. Our online gateway business basically reveals APIs to allow businesses to sell online, a business branch that hasn’t been under the focus of the banking sector. However, there are some digital banking companies, including Simple and Moven, which have tapped into this branch. I think that this is the really disruptive transformation which is yet to happen. In other words, you have the technology drivers that will happen through the APIs and you also have regulation that’s changing at the same pace as with innovation. Realex aims at developing technology which benefits from regulation. We are driving and even all of our customer service representatives are all technology graduates.

We saw an opportunity with the advent of the PSD2 to tackle the concerns of gaining access to the payment systems and to the account. There are many regulatory drivers and, to be best placed, we applied for and successfully became a financially regulated institution. I think that we will see a world of innovation open up to banking, in particular. We have seen the opening of the cards ecosystem which has allowed companies like Square and Stripe to come up and seize the opportunity. The ACH networks will begin to open up and because of this we decided to launch the Realex Fire account service. Through our license, we can issue multicurrency accessible accounts which allows us. to deliver more solutions to businesses and to consumers.

How does Realex Fire account work? Why should a consumer, who has so many options to pay, open up a Realex Fire personal payment account?

We launched our personal app in late 2014 and it is a peer-to-peer payments system, a free mobile payments system in the UK and Ireland. With a Realex Fire Personal Account you can pay to any mobile number in Ireland and the UK in real-time, supporting both EUR and GBP payments. You can also request payment from friends and family, lodge funds from other bank accounts, create a connection with people you pay often and get notified immediately of activity on your account via your smartphone anytime and anywhere. That is the first kind of application that we have of the technology and the licence.

Our business is B2B and we provide white label services for our partners. Therefore, we are not going to spend billions on marketing. We have demonstrated, ever since the company’s inception, that we can provide money transfer services. Additionally, there are some banks that we are speaking to at the moment for possible partnerships. As a regulated body, we can help bring new payments solutions to market.

Do you, primarily focus on banks in Ireland and the UK for this?

Currently, we provide our services to Ireland and the UK. Besides our partnership possibilities with the banks that I have just mentioned. For us, this is just the start of the journey. Right now, there is the personal account. Our next step is to launch the business account that will not be just a peer-to-peer payments system, it will enable people to pay businesses as well. Because we can issue accounts, we can also get merchants to set up their own closed-loop network. More so, they could actually get their customers to open up Realex Fire accounts as well. Therefore, our next step is to tap into the consumer-to-business market. Then, we could tap into the world of banking.

Where do you differentiate from banks in this respect?

Our main business model difference from the banking business is that we help businesses get paid and we also inform them when they are paid. For example, we can notify businesses that they are paid via e-invoices delivered via personal smartphones. Once the operation is acknowledged, the customer clicks for confirmation and he sends a receipt.

What about your activity outside the UK and Ireland?

Our licence is “passported” in 17 countries at this stage. However, we are also taking into consideration importing USD into our payments service. Consequently, expanding our reach and capability are on our roadmap.

About Gary Conroy

As COO and Director, Gary leads the Marketing, Sales and Operations functions. His accountabilities include business development, brand and value proposition, generation and retention of new revenue streams through the delivery of superior customer service. Gary has over 15 years’ experience in large scale implementations across the financial services and technology sector, working with the likes of Goldman Sachs, Kindle / Misys Financial Software and Vordel / Axway.

About Realex

Founded in 2000 by Colm Lyon, Realex Payments is one of Europe’s largest and fastest growing online payment gateways, processing payments valued in excess of GBP 24 billion annually on behalf of 12,500 retailers throughout Europe. Realex Payments has its head office in Dublin and offices in London and Paris. Clients include Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, Aer Lingus and Not on the High Street. They managed online payments services for all Global Payments ecommerce retailers who need payment processing.