E194 That Great Business Show The Republic of Ireland (pop. 5m) has 2.7 million Revolut users. Percentage wise Ireland is the biggest adopter of neobanks across the EU. Head of Revolut EU is Joe Heneghan who talks to us about what the future of banking looks like. Will we ever darken a banking hall again? Also biting the heels of the so-called 'pilar banks' are SME funders like Grid Finance whose founder, Derek Butler, also joins us to see what the sees now and what he sees looking into the future. Then, there's Financial Services Ireland that is hell-bent on making Ireland a fintech capital (as are the UK, France, Lithuania, Estonia...). Patricia Callan, FSI Director, gives us an overview of that the challenges and opportunities are for new and established fintech startups here. As always we ask all our guests for their 'hire in a heartbeat' recommendation and here's this episode's line-up. Lobbyist Patricia would like to hire Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's PR when UK PM, for his lobbying prowess (and for his podcast 'The Rest is Politics') Derek would like to have Mairead McGuinness, EU Commissioner for Financial Services on his team, for obvious reasons as he explains the surreal amount of regulation the industry is currently facing Joe is an admirer of the Wayflyer model (a very clever Irish fintech unicorn) and he'd like if Aidan Corbett, founder, would drop into his office for a 'chat'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.