Kealon Lennon’s firm, which has a lucrative deal with Mastercard, has seen a tripling of business in 2023

CleverCards, the Dublin-based digital payments firm, is to hire 35 people after announcing that the business has tripled in volume this year.

The company says that it has opened 350,000 accounts and that over 5,000 Irish businesses have sent its CleverCards digital Mastercards to their employees and customers.

Earlier this year, company founder and CEO, Kealon Lennon, said that CleverCards had seen a 5,000pc increase in revenue in the latter part of 2022.

CleverCards’ system is one of Mastercard’s few digital payments partners. It works on smartphones, where a valid virtual card is either emailed or scanned via a QR code and then added to the phone’s virtual wallet.

The service lets any company set up a virtual Mastercard with pre-set limits, controllable centrally from a company’s financial manager. It can be used for anything from expenses to tax-free Christmas bonuses. It can be spent anywhere that Mastercard is available.

CleverCards charges a percentage for when the money is loaded onto the card, with an additional revenue stream from Mastercard. For bigger deals, involving thousands of employees or virtual cards, ‘platform license fees’ are also involved.

The ease of controlling and replacing virtual cards is seen as a big draw to the system. For workers travelling abroad who lose a card, a replacement can take a week whereas a virtual digital card can be blocked immediately, with a new one issued on the spot.

Similarly, if companies are trying to organise an employee bonus scheme the week before Christmas, it’s not subject to the usual constraints of banks’ manual processes.

“I am particularly proud of what we have achieved here at CleverCards over the past year,” said Mr Lennon.

“From facilitating tax-free benefits for hundreds of thousands of employees to streamlining the administration processes of over 5,000 businesses across Ireland, CleverCards continues to embody the essence of innovation and financial empowerment.”

Mr Lennon was the former founder and CEO of the greeting app firm Cleverbug and has a long career in corporate financing.

Reporting On:www.independent.ie