Ireland Exchange to Deepen Georgia’s Payments Ties With Europe

Moving into its second decade, an Atlanta-based trade association for the payment processing industry is deepening its international ties through a strategic agreement in Ireland.

The American Transaction Processors Coalition in February signed a pact with The Fintech Corridor, a group aiming to bridge the industry gap between Belfast, Northern Ireland, which remains in the United Kingdom, and Dublin, the capital of the republic of Ireland in the European Union.

The agreement is focused on driving mutual investment, knowledge exchanges and transatlantic networking, but ATPC Executive Director H. West Richards says some of the greatest potential may lie in exporting Georgia’s workforce-development innovations.

Many of the same companies that helped create the Georgia Fintech Academy, which has led to local fintech jobs for 1,800 students since 2019, are also investors in Ireland, Mr. Richards said.

“Our board companies employ thousands and thousands of people in Ireland. Those logos are in the suburbs of Dublin everywhere. It looks like Alpharetta,” he told Global Atlanta in an interview.

While Belfast has adopted the concept with a European spin, creating a fintech apprenticeship program, it is less developed in Dublin, where more leading member firms like Elavon, FIS and Fiserv have offices, Mr. Richards said.

“I’d like to have some kind of fintech curriculum worked out with those universities in Dublin. I need to get them excited and get them going,” Mr. Richards told Global Atlanta in an interview.

Mr. Richards and ATPC leaders will meet with The Fintech Corridor officials including CEO Hilary Moran and industry leaders during the May 13-16 Transatlantic Fintech Exchange, a conference spanning both Dublin and Belfast.

“A successful program of events will drive greater connectivity and collaboration within the U.S, EU and U.K., while allowing participants to build meaningful relationships in a relaxed ‘exchange’ environment,” Ms. Moran said in a news release.

The Endgame

Beyond cultivating business, the eventual endgame of ATCP, Mr. Richards said, is to help member companies understand and shape the regulatory landscape in Brussels, where American trade associations have little visibility and influence.

While the ATPC led the way into the United Kingdom and retains strong relationships there, Brexit has disrupted much of the harmony that existed between the U.K. and EU financial sectors.

Ireland, which has retained its visibility into the market of 440 million consumers, has “become a little bit of a linchpin,” Mr. Richards told Global Atlanta.

“Brexit profoundly changed how EU and U.K. fintech companies interact with each other, and access to companies in both jurisdictions will enable us to work closely to develop common solutions and increase cooperation and opportunities on both sides of the Atlantic, especially as U.S. regulators work on cybersecurity, data privacy and other critical issues.”

Ireland’s affinity with the U.S. broadly and Georgia more specifically makes it an ideal conduit to impact goings-on in the EU, where strict data-privacy and consumer-protection regulations sometimes catch American tech companies off guard.

Playing the Long Game

The Ireland agreement is just the latest example of how the ATPC has played a long game in its decade of industry support, says Mr. Richards.

Though the ATPC retains a nationwide remit, and its leaders find themselves often in the corridors of Washington D.C., the association is firmly rooted in Atlanta thanks to the city’s payments-industry inertia.

When the ATPC was founded, it coined the term “Transaction Alley” to highlight the fact that 70 percent of the credit- and debit-card swipes in the U.S. run through Georgia companies.

While payments (and fintech more broadly) already employed some 30,000 people in the state at the time, the industry had yet to coalesce around a joint strategy to build on this momentum.

“I think a lot of people are surprised that we were created out of thin air, on an idea, and on a shoestring have quite possibly become the most consequential payments-industry trade association in the United States,” Mr. Richards said.

While smaller than some of its competitors, such as the Electronic Transactions Association, the ATPC is laser-focused on the payments sector. It doesn’t spend as much time on fintechs, which often try to disrupt the “legacy players” that form much of the ATPC membership.

Keeping a sharper alignment among a smaller group has helped ATPC make an impact that belies its size, Mr. Richards said, using an analogy from geopolitics.

“They are the United Nations. ATPC is NATO. Both are important, but different. Big roles, but in that analogy conveys the ability to muster resources rapidly on the government relations front, move the needle fast— and big.”

ATPC operates on a consultancy model, bringing a cadre experts on government relations, cybersecurity and other areas to bear on behalf of member companies.

“They’re not dedicated resources,” Mr. Richards said of the ATPC team. “But their capabilities and capacity to understand and to influence things in the legislative realm or the agency realm are very different.”

That nimbleness means the ATPC has been more apt to seed ideas than to fully cultivate them. One example is the P20 (Payments20), which brought together top companies and regulators in the U.K. and U.S. to reduce bureaucratic friction in a sector that underpins global commerce.

The forum continues today under independent leadership and remains a node in ATPC’s transatlantic network, which includes British member companies like FeatureSpace, Kani Payments, RedCompass and Paysafe.

Another idea that ended up sprouting was Fintech Atlanta, the local industry coalition that emerged from a partnership with the Technology Association of Georgia and the Metro Atlanta Chamber.

ATPC has even been involved on the economic development front, traveling with former Gov. Nathan Deal to a Brazil to land the U.S. headquarters of Merchant-E.

Cyber threats abroad

Perhaps least known relative to its nationwide impact is the ATPC Cyber Council, which brings together chief information security officers of the top companies to share ideas on securing the country’s payments ecosystem.

“It’s critical infrastructure,” he said. “Our CISOs — it’s their job to protect you. Because if your credit card doesn’t work, you’re in trouble.”

Just two years into its existence, ATPC was lobbying for the Cybersecurity Information Security Act, which was meant to enable companies to report breaches and other incidents without fear of undue government meddling.

While doing that, they heard a chilling warning from members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee: “You know, Atlanta’s got a giant bullseye on it.”

The Kremlin, China and other actors, it turned out, were “well aware” of the concentration of payments firms in the city, making it a target for those who might try to use their networks as a side door into the broader financial system.

ATPC heard that loud and clear and brought the message back to city and state leaders. It later hosted an Atlanta conference headlined by U.S. senators that brought CISOs together to talk about shoring up defenses and how public officials should respond in the event of a hack.

Those meetings fizzled during the pandemic; what remained was the group of executives ATPC had assembled, who had a unique voice speak to regulators and law makers with authority on industry trends and threats.

Since then, ATPC has activated the council to lobby against bills the association has seen as counterproductive to the industry, receiving kudos from the White House and along with requests for its CISOs to review possible payments-industry effects of potential rule changes. Now, the ATPC Cyber Council is led by Norma Krayem, a D.C.-based expert on cybersecurity.

Beyond Ireland

Beyond Ireland, Mr. Richards said the association is looking to extend its connections to the Netherlands and to work to understand the Canadian market better.

Larger payments companies also see opportunity in the developing world, even those markets like India and Southeast Asia where fintechs have emerged to fill gaps in traditional payment-processing infrastructure.

“The big opportunity for our companies really is the emerging marketplace,” Mr. Richards said, noting there will be a battle between the U.S. and its allies and China to set the rules of the road as emerging economies deepen their connections to global financial markets and networks.

“Our companies are leveraging the reputations that are being in business for 60 or 70 years. They’re all very forward-looking. And I think that they look at the big opportunities being the emerging marketplace — bringing their expertise to that, and then helping those marketplaces either plug into our infrastructure or create their own.”

Domestically, the ATPC is working to revive the Payments and Fintech Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, opening it up to members outside of the Financial Services Committee. About 11 members have joined so far, about five of them from Georgia, including bipartisan co-chairs Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from the 11th district, and David Scott, a Democrat from the 13th.

Each legislator was honored at ATPC’s 10th anniversary celebration April 25 at the Park Tavern.

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Speakers lined up for the Transatlantic Exchange May 13-16:

• Karen O’Leary, Head of Payments and Securities at Central Bank of Ireland
• Neale Richmond TD, Minister of State with responsibility for Financial Services, Credit Unions and Insurance
• Conor Murphy MLA, Economy Minister
• Paul O’Hare, Tech & Finance Lead, Google
• Karl Hanlon, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), FinTrU
• Margaret Hearty, CEO, InterTradeIreland
• Kieran Donoghue, CEO, Invest NI
• Maeve Monaghan, CEO, NOW Group
• Alison Donnelly, Director, Fscom
• Richard Swales, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, Paysafe
• Stephen Groarke, Chief Financial Officer, Elavon/US Bank EMEA
• Hartwig Gerhartinger, Global Head of Regulatory and Government Affairs, Paysafe

Learn more in this release from the Belfast city government.