Our CEO Colm Lyon was recently interviewed for The Paypers website, the leading independent source of news and analysis for professionals in the global payment community. You can read the interview in full below, or view the original here

Colm Lyon founded Realex Payments in 2000. Prior to 2000, Colm’s career spanned over twenty five years in payment related businesses, starting with fourteen years in the financial service sector. In 2009 he was awarded the Internet Hero Award at the Golden Spider Awards for his contribution to the Irish Internet Industry. In 2009 Colm founded the “Internet Growth Alliance”, a business led initiative to support the international growth ambitions of Irish Internet businesses. Colm is involved in other internet start up businesses and has plans to launch a major new payment business, Carapay in 2011.

 

Your company’s vision is …

… to be a highly innovative payment services business that continually adds value, where our customers are advocates and our people love to excel.
We are not just content with being innovative, we wish to be highly innovative. We regard innovation as a key aspect of the Vision. We are a payment services business, the word services rather than product is used to support the concept that our customers enter into long term relationships which centre on the provision of high class expertise and service in the payments area.

We aspire to continually add value to all stakeholders – customers, staff and shareholders. We believe that adding value is crucial to our success and using our people and expertise we can deliver this value. We want our customers to be advocates i.e. to speak well of us in a proactively positive way. Thus we will drive the customer service values to the extent that advocacy is the expected everyday level.

Our people enable and deliver the vision. We aim to attract, build and keep the best people, those that are not happy with the ordinary but love to excel.

By investing in our people and our expertise, we put ourselves and our customers in a very strong position. It’s a very fluid industry, and every client is different, so our reactions are tested every day and we’re built to handle that.

How does Realex Payments contribute to the development of the online payment industry and what challenges has the company faced in this respect until now?

We bring a fresh approach to the industry, with a real focus on people and expertise. Having a great product is not good enough – it has to be wrapped in real values.

In terms of the challenges we faced, they say that the legacy that took you here is the hardest thing to change, when you wish to move forward. So after 7/8 years of habit we had to change the way we were made up. This took time and great commitment to the vision. Realex Payments is now a recognised leader in the development of strategy for growth in the payment industry. It has doubled its customer base in the last two years and has seen the volume increase to approximately GBP 12 billion per annum.

What are your company`s main achievements?

I think our main achievement has been the successful internationalisation of our business. Many payment companies fail to achieve cross border growth. We now employ over a dozen people in the London office and process payments for over 1,100 clients in the UK. We process almost £3 billion worth of online payments into all the UK banks, representing 28% of the total value we process.

While internationalising our business we have maintained an extraordinary record of system reliability and customer service – our clients are real advocates. We also have offices in Paris, where we are a few months away from a significant market entry for several European countries.

What kind of services/products do you provide and which are your main selling points which give the company an edge over the competition in the online payments space?

We provide a comprehensive range of payment processing services, connecting businesses and financial institutions to facilitate payment and related processing. Our business is about combining the best expertise, service, and technology that enables online payment processing.

One of our key strengths is that company wide there is absolute clarity and buy-in to our vision and there is a real sense of ownership. Without this shared strategy, we as a company would not succeed. And without doubt what sets us apart from the competition is our partnered approach and then the level of customer service and account management the retailer can expect throughout the lifetime of their relationship with us. Our corporate clients all have dedicated account managers, and all of our support staff are in house and intimately acquainted with the product. We deliver tailored approaches all the time, and to do that to the level required you need to build a strong relationship as a starting point.

In analysing the competitive landscape we note our differences, not just in terms of product, but also in terms of position and capability.

What payment systems or products do you consider to be the main competition for Realex Payments? Why?

The main developments are social commerce and mobile, and of course the two go hand in hand really. As user behaviour changes the product adapts. We don’t set anything in stone. And away from traditional payments, we see a world where online payments changes fundamentally, and that’s something we are pioneering with Carapay which will launch later this year. Realex Payments sees opportunity both in terms of regional expansion and product development.

Why have you chosen to develop a package service (RealPay) specifically for small and medium sized businesses?

Many smaller businesses want access to corporate level expertise and reliability. In the payments landscape that is often not an option. So as a seasoned provider of premium product and service to corporate clients we decided to make this available to SMEs. I think what we are seeing in e-commerce with SME’s is only the beginning. So, on the one hand it represents a great opportunity but also, for many of them, it will be their first foray into a digital marketplace. We are very well equipped to deal with the first time seller. We have many developers we work with closely, numerous different shopping cart plug-ins, and we are bank independent.

So we are ideally placed, as a gateway, to help someone get online for the first time. We are well connected and so I think we take a lot of the fear out of bringing a business online for the first time for many traders.

Your division, Carapay, a cross-border mobile and online payment instrument for consumers and businesses has been awarded a Payments Institution license under the Payment Services Directive (PSD). What impact will this have on your business as a whole and what benefits will customers gain?

Carapay aims to be one of the most disruptive new models in online banking and payments. While we can’t say too much at this stage, we have disclosed that as a new subsidiary it is fully licenced under the PSD, this licence has been passported and we are now working with three of the world’s largest banks to join the necessary schemes and systems. We believe in one thing and one thing only – “the future of money is regulated, electronic, mobile, social and (almost) free”. It has a strategic objective of bringing social media and financial services together; it’s a major play in an area where this combination has not been seen before. The combination of security, social networking and a payment account is certain to change the payment landscape over the next few years.

Carapay will benefit consumers and business alike. Consumers will be able, via mobile and web applications, to pay other users money in real time, securely, safely and for free. Designed like a social network Carapay will allow users to set up trusted relationships with their “circle” of friends, forming the CaraCircle. Consumers will be also able to use Carapay to shop online, they can choose to pay by Carapay eliminating the need for entering their credit/debit card details on web sites.

Businesses can register online and start accepting payments via Carapay almost instantly, enabling them to accept payments electronically from their customers. It will reduce the need for cash and cheques, of which there are over 4 billion written in UK, France and Ireland. For online retailers it will significantly reduce costs and issues around risk, security and fraud, while opening up online shopping to people who don’t have cards or don’t wish to use their cards online.

Your company has already developed applications which can be used to process credit and debit card payments. Have you also considered making new payment options (e.g. online banking, mobile) available for your clients?

We have indeed, hence the development of Carapay – a new way to pay and be paid! We also have a number of m-commerce and f-commerce applications in development at the moment.
Realex Payments delivers its services to corporate clients across various industries including airlines, mobile carriers, utilities, insurance companies and gaming companies.

What is the most profitable sector for Realex? Are you in talks to enter partnerships with other corporate clients?

We are in talks with corporate clients and potential clients all the time. We are growing our business development function, and the people we invest in are hugely knowledgeable. Not just in payments, but different business sectors, from retail and gaming, to travel and insurance. We have had large clients like Aer Lingus, Virgin Atlantic and The AA with us for a long time and we are excited about making some new announcements over the coming months as our list of partners continues to grow.

Does Realex Payments provide fraud management services to its customers?

Right from the start we build automated an advanced fraud scoring and management system into the payment process as an innate element. We provide tools such as fraud scoring, payer authentication, address verification and CVV checking. We also provide a comprehensive fraud management system that includes over forty automated checks that are completed in real time while the card is being authorised. For example it can tell you this card has been used with two email addresses, this mobile phone has been topped up with two cards, this card has been issued in France and so on.

Where is Realex Payments now in terms of market coverage? Do you have plans for future expansion?

Well, we started in Ireland 11 years ago and we are lucky to enjoy a large market share there. In recent years we have made great headway in the UK, with referral programmes and a great relationship with the banks and the developer community seeing us make a number of big client acquisitions like Chain Reaction Cycles and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as year on year growth in the number of SME’s who choose to process with us. Going forward we are looking to France and the Netherlands where we are currently hiring. It’s all go! These are very exciting times.

What are your top priorities for 2011?

At the moment our focus is on scaling the company, we officially launched in Paris last year and later this year will see further European expansion for us. As mentioned previously, the launching of Carapay is a huge milestone that we look forward to looking back on with satisfaction at the end of the year.

How do you envision the future of the European payments industry?

The European payments landscape is about to change in a significant way. The most important event over the last few years was the transposition of the Payment Services Directive. This has opened unbelievable opportunities for businesses that have the expertise to bring non-credit based banking and payment products to market. The chances of bank collaboration to build the products that people need are slim and in fairness it is not their focus. Payments occur at the end of a social engagement and they must be processed without risk, more securely and at lower cost. Thankfully there are many problems still to be solved in the payments world, it keeps me busy!