Colm Lyon, CEO and Founder at fire.com
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Colm Lyon is a payments and fintech entrepreneur with more than 30 years’ experience in financial services, spanning banking, payments infrastructure, regulation and digital transformation.
He founded Realex Payments in 2000, at an early stage of online commerce in Ireland and the UK. Realex grew rapidly alongside the rise of e-commerce and became one of Europe’s leading online payment service providers.
By the time it was acquired by Global Payments in 2015, Realex was processing more than €35 billion in transactions annually for over 14,000 customers, including airlines, insurers, telecoms providers and major consumer brands.
Following the acquisition, Realex Financial Services was spun out and remained under Colm’s ownership. That business later became Fire Financial Services, now trading as Fire, and focuses on helping businesses digitise how they get paid and pay out. The company supports services including euro and sterling bank transfers, foreign exchange, open banking payments and debit card issuing, all built on its own in-house platform. Today, Fire processes billions in payments each year for thousands of business customers, including large financial institutions.
Alongside building businesses, Colm has been closely involved in shaping the wider payments ecosystem, and also invests in Irish and UK startups through his family office.