Rapid inflation is seeing consumers and merchants turn to alternative payment solutions such as open banking. Prommt is an Irish-born payments platform that enables businesses to request, collect, and track remote and over-the-phone payments. The company recently completed a €1.5 million euro Series A funding round. Ronan talks to Donal McGuinness, the CEO at Prommt.

Donal talks about his background, what Prommt does, fraud, cash, open banking and more.

More about Donal McGuiness:

Serial entrepreneur Donal McGuinness is CEO of Prommt. He studied Computer Science at DCU and Telecommunications Engineering at DIT and spent the early years of his career in the telecommunications industry. His experience in mobile payments dates to 1999 when he founded his first mobile payments company, ItsMobile. Donal was also a Non-Executive Director of the Irish Internet Association from 2009 to 2011 and a movie distribution business from 2002 to 2020.

In 2016 Donal joined a silicon valley startup in the identity verification space called Danal inc, where he set up and grew the global business outside of the USA as General Manager of EMEA until 2019 when the business was acquired by Boku Inc for $112 million USD. Donal joined Prommt as CEO in 2019. He is an innovator and is passionate about payment innovation.

With the chair of the newly formed community-driven World Metaverse Council, we discuss all things Metaverse.

What is the Metaverse right now, what is the vision and its challenges? Dr. Jane Thomason is the Inaugural Chair of the World Metaverse Council and a  globally recognized thought leader on  Metaverse.  She holds distinguished roles on the editorial boards of  “The Journal of Metaverse” and “Frontiers in Blockchain”  and  is an  Industry Associate at  University College London, Centre for Blockchain.  She is the author of  “Blockchain for Global Social Change,” “Applied Ethics in a Digital World,”  and “Advancements in the New World of Web 3: A Look Toward the Decentralized Future” in press (2023).  Dr. Jane is frequently invited to deconstruct the Metaverse and explain how this growing industry will impact the future.   Dr. Jane was named as  one of “8 Metaverse experts to follow,” “top 100 women in Web 3 and Metaverse,” and “Top 25 Women in Fintech and Blockchain, MENA” and was featured by CNN in their series on the Metaverse “Decoding the Secrets of the Metaverse.” She was recently honored by AIBC Eurasia as “Web 3 Leader of the Year.”

Legendary sci fi author, astrophysicist, and NASA advisor David Brin rejoins the Futurists for a special first anniversary show. Topics include: Wall Street’s insatiable AIs, Karl Marx and capitalism, the magic of competition, Hollywood tropes, self-preventing prophecies, the flaw in Asimov’s laws of robotics and hope for a positive sum game. 
Robert TercekFounder of The Futurists Network
RobertTercek.com

we caught up with Smári McCarthy, founder of Ecosophy to learn more about his plans to use data to help companies aiming to better understand climate change and factor it into their planning and operations. He is also involved in numerous other freedom of data initiatives and Is also a member of the Icelandic Parliament too. See more about Ecosophy here https://medium.com/ecosophy. We were invited to Iceland by Business Iceland to learn more about innovation, sustainability and diversity in the country.

Smári McCarthy (Icelandic pronunciation: ​[ˈsmauːrɪ mahˈkar̥ðɪ]; born 7 February 1984) is an Icelandic-Irish politician, innovator and information activist known for his work relating to direct democracy, transparency and privacy.

McCarthy was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, the son of Kolbrún Óskarsdóttir and Eugene McCarthy. His mother is Icelandic while his father is Irish. At age one, his family moved to England. At age 9, they returned to Iceland, settling in Vestmannaeyjar, a town and archipelago off the south coast. He studied mathematics at the University of Iceland, but left to get involved with the digital fabrication movement.

Definition of Ecosophy

Ecosophy or ecophilosophy (a portmanteau of ecological philosophy) is a philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium. The term was coined by the French post-structuralist philosopher and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari and the Norwegian father of deep ecology, Arne Næss.

More about Business Iceland

Business Iceland is a public-private partnership that works to improve the competitiveness of Icelandic companies in foreign markets and to stimulate exports from Iceland through marketing, brand building and export and trade services.

We flew to Iceland via Dublin on IcelandAir as a guest of Business Iceland.

About Icelandair

Icelandair is a leading airline offering flights to, from, via and within Iceland – our hub and home. We provide safe, reliable flights with exceptional service to metropolitan areas on both sides of the Atlantic. Flying domestically within Iceland and to destinations in Greenland, Icelandair is a leading option for Transatlantic travel.

Every day as we navigate from one company to another, consuming one service to the next, we leave behind a long trail of digital exhaust. Do we know how our data travel and where to? Do we truly have control over our data and who can we entrust it with? In this episode of One Vision, Theo welcomes back Joe Toscano, author and international keynote speaker, on data, privacy, and compliance. As for the new tools such as AI chatbots? You can’t control AI hallucinations. But we must proceed with caution and always keep humans in the loop. 

We were invited to Iceland by Business Iceland to learn more about innovation, sustainability and diversity in the country. We were delighted to meet and interview their dynamic and energetic Minister of Higher education, Science and Innovation Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir. We cover diversity, innovation, why Iceland has to scale quickly, and how it engages with a global audience and market.

More about Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir

I'm born in Reykjavík 30th November 1990. I was appointed Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation in Iceland in November 2021. Before I was the Minister of Justice in the years 2019-2021 and became the youngest Minister of Justice ever appointed and youngest minister in the history of the Icelandic republic. I've a master's and BA degree from the University of Iceland in law.
At 24 years I was elected the secretary of the Independence Party. The role is one of the three leadership roles in my party. A year later I was elected to parliament and became the chairman of the Judicial Affairs and Education Committee, NATO PA and later chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and IPU.

We flew to Iceland on Air Iceland as a guest of Business Iceland.

Chatbots are rapidly becoming an essential part of many businesses' customer service strategies. With advances in AI and machine learning, chatbots can now handle a wide range of tasks, from answering simple queries to helping customers make purchases. One business that does not use chatbots is Elio Networks who believes their customers should deal with humans. Ronan talks to David Russell the Chief Executive of Elio Networks.

David talks about what Elio Networks do, chatbots, empathy, AI security issues, the AI open letter and more

More about Elio Networks:

Earlier this year just before launching in Cork, Host Ireland  rebranded as  Elio Networks. Their goal is to boost business connectivity right across Ireland, and beyond with business broadband that aims higher, connects faster, and performs smarter.

Description: A look at the state ofdigital transformation in the financial services industry through the eyes of tech consultants and software development providers.
Insights shared by Bozhidar Goranchev, an Engineering Manager at Accedia - one of the top IT companies based in Bulgaria, with a global reach spanning more than 20 countries on 5 continents. 

Bozhidar Goranchev https://www.linkedin.com/in/bozhidargoranchev/ is an experienced IT professional with a passion for emerging technology. Before joining Accedia, he has worked at Accenture as a Technology Consultant and a Business Analyst on projects in the financial services industry. 

He earned his BSc in Business and Management, and his MSc in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation at LSE. 

Accedia https://accedia.com/

Funding concerns and talent shortages, as well as geopolitical tensions and conflicts, have cast a shadow on our thriving, vibrant industry. Against the backdrop of these challenges and the cost of living crisis, what should we focus on and how do we move forward? Don’t miss this week’s One Vision, where Theo welcomes Raf De Kimpe, CEO of FinTech Week London, back to the show to talk about what to expect at the flagship conference — a meeting of the minds and hours of thoughtful conversations with some of the brightest in the industry. This is the FinTech Conference you’ve been waiting for. And it’s not to be missed!

A Fintech discussion with Openness as a guide with a Fintech entrepreneur, Dr. Ritesh Jain. With insights from the UK market, the Middle East, and India.Ritesh Jain https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritesh/ is a globally recognised Top 10 fintech and payments leader. Awarded a PhD for his work in Open Banking, Payments Innovation, and Financial Inclusion by Portsmouth University, He founded Infynit to humanize credit and credit card experience; in the past led HSBC as COO Digital, led Future of Payments for VISA, introduced apple pay to the market. A fellow at the University of London & the founding member of the fintech centre, Advisor to IIT Kanpur. He is also a G20 GPFI (Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion) member advisor, Policy advocate on emerging tech, financial services, open banking, digital commerce, and central bank digital currency. And he is visiting faculty at leading institutes globally, including Hull and Oxford