Image: SevenMaps7/Shutterstock
Prepaid Financial Services surpassed the £1bn mark in e-money card loading this year alone, with £2.82bn in total to date.
When you think of fintech companies, you usually associate them with capital cities and financial centres, not Navan in the Royal County of Meath.
In the case of Prepaid Financial Services (PFS), a company founded by Navan native Noel Moran at his kitchen table in London, it is firmly on the map, having reached £2.82bn (€3.2bn) in total card loading volume since 2010.
‘These are massive numbers for us as a company’
– NOEL MORAN
Not only that, but the company is accelerating its processing volumes and has processed £1bn (€1.14bn) of this in 2017 alone. This does not take into account third-party payment processing into e-money accounts.
Digital Navan
PFS staff in Navan break out the bubbly to mark the £1bn payments milestone in just one year. Image: PFS
Navan is known for many things – carpets, furniture, comedians such as Tommy Tiernan, and don’t forget the Beaufort scale – but not fintech.
Moran, who left school early, has built up a sizeable business that now employs 194 people in Ireland, London (where PFS is headquartered) and Malta.
The company’s solutions include e-wallets, physical and virtual prepaid cards and accounts, as well as current accounts in the UK and the eurozone. PFS is authorised and regulated by the FCA in the UK as an electronic money institution and has passported its e-money licence to enable e-money issuance in the EEA.
More than 4m e-money accounts have now been issued over the lifetime of the company and transactions take place in more than 22 countries.
And now, Moran is now putting his nous to good use for start-ups by sponsoring a €1m Innovation Fund for entrepreneurs, SMEs and schools, with winners to be announced in January.
Moran commented: “This is a major milestone and one that everyone has worked very hard to achieve.
“In terms of the exact figures, these are massive numbers for us as a company. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to our clients, e-money account users and team for the hard work that has been put into getting us to this point in time.
“Our next goal is to reach £2bn in loading [in a year] and it will not take us eight years to achieve this milestone.”
