Irish International Payments Start-Up recruiting 25 staff after securing €1m funding

PiP iT Global, the Galway-based fintech start-up, is now in recruitment mode having hired eight new staff in its Galway offices in 2018, with plans to recruit a further 17 people in the next 12 -18 months. The expansion follows a successful fund-raising exercise earlier this year when they secured over €1 million from private investors and Enterprise Ireland.

PiP iT is a secure and private online payment platform which helps customers spend cash digitally. It allows migrants living and working around the world, who are often denied access to backing facilities most people take for granted, to pay bills and transfer money overseas at a fraction of the cost and time taken by more traditional international payment providers. Described as a “social impact company”, PiP iT founders have a clear and genuine mission statement when it comes to what they aim to achieve with this payment system.

Ollie Walsh, CEO and co-founder of PiP iT spoke of the company’s mission statement,
“We are digitalising cash. And we are trying to remove the two main obstacles migrants face when transferring money – risk and cost. We want to play a big part in combating financial exclusion across the world, by helping the unbanked and underbanked to fully participate in the Digital World.

Our fees are 1.5%. This is a significant saving on the payment, but to put it into some context for example, in a developing nation such as Ghana, one year’s health insurance costs $5. So, paying a single bill with PiP iT, as opposed to remitting cash, could pay for health insurance for a family member for a whole year.”

Examples of savings based on remitting £120 from the UK with today’s rates:

India:

PiP iT = 0.5% = 60p
Western Union = 7.8% = £9.35
MoneyGram = 6.5% = £7.80

Ghana:

PiP it = 2.5% =£3
Western Union = 10.95% = £13
MoneyGram = 8.36% = £10

Sri Lanka:

PiP iT = 1.5% = £1.80
Western Union = 8.9% = £10.68
MoneyGram = 8.2% = £9.84

The idea for PiP iT was borne from the fact that international migration is at an all-time high with more than 250 million migrant workers across the globe collectively sending more than $600bn to their families back home each year.

Mr. Walsh went on to explain how personal experience gave him the initial idea,

“I moved to the UK in 2014 and found that as a migrant, it can take up to a year to open a bank account overseas. We have developed technology which will now allow people to go to a post office branch and lodge money into their bank at home at a fraction of the cost.

There is a clever strategy at play here and our PiP iT Global team researches migration patterns to see where our platform will be needed the most.”

PiP iT Global is already in partnership with 12 international payment partners in UK, Africa, the Middle East, Canada and India, and the new marketing, sales and IT roles will help to grow the business in the countries most suited to the payment services.

Mr. Walsh said they have several development plans for 2019,
“We currently have a healthy pipeline with prospects from UK, West Africa, India, Philippines, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Canada, and are working on getting these across the line and transacting in early 2019. We also plan to launch PiP iT V2 next year which will introduce increased functionality and addition