Sean’s Blog

I’m not going out on a limb by saying that the European crisis will impact growth for years, if not decades, to come. People are not spending, and banks are not lending. No surprise then that so much focus is being placed on innovation. Since the 2007 financial crisis smart government policy has shifted to replicating the Silicon Valley idea, creating hubs for young entrepreneurs and technology-focussed innovators to come, create and share with the world. Ireland is no different, and is doing it very well. I recently came across a top 30 of the most innovative countries in the world, and Ireland was at number 5!

Ireland has some great advantages that will allow it to follow through with its idea to become the island of innovation, particularly in the web space. Just look at the major companies with European headquarters in the Emerald Isle: Google, Facebook, Twitter… CurrencyFair! I think Ireland’s great strength is its education system that has always been world class and...

In case you didn’t know, Alan Joyce is the CEO of Qantas, Australia’s national airline. Last Saturday he took the unprecedented action of grounding the entire Qantas fleet. It left passengers, the Australian Government, Qantas workers and the unions completely stunned. It was a case of “What did he just say? Did I hear that correctly? Is he insane?” A mere 8 minutes from the announcement, at around 5pm Saturday, every plane was stopped on the tarmac. Every single plane. Even those that had boarded were told to “get off, you won’t be flying today.”

Why take such drastic action you may ask? Qantas had already sustained months of industrial action that has been causing flight cancellations and passenger inconvenience not to mention a 68m loss of revenue. The unions had told him this would go on for another 12 months if their proposals were not accepted.

Now look at Europe, months and months of talk and half-hearted solutions and now Greece kicking up again. The...

As I write this, my Rugby World Cup 2011 clock is showing 10 days, 3 hours, 13 minutes and 27 seconds until the start of this year’s tournament! The wait is nearly over and I have to say I am more than a little excited. Nothing could build my excitement more than the great win by the Wallabies over the All Blacks last weekend to break the drought on Tri Nations Championships. It was a cracking game and gave an insight into what we can expect from the greatest sporting event on earth (in my opinion anyway)! The pressure building on the New Zealand team given their past “choking” episodes makes this the most anticipated RWC ever. Will it be too much for them? Well the Wallabies showed that if you’re willing to bash them up, then they’re certainly beatable.

With tens of thousands of people travelling to New Zealand for the event there will be no shortage of New Zealand Dollars being purchased to keep the fans in high spirits for the duration of the tournament. In fact the...

Today we officially launched our services in New Zealand. Alison Lambden, our NZ based representative is busy whipping the press into a frenzy and spreading the word on CurrencyFair.

New Zealanders by nature are great travellers, often doing stints in the UK, Australia and Ireland, and with NZ being such a great place to live it’s a popular spot for many Brits retiring or students moving to study.

Foreign exchange requirements in New Zealand are large and growing. Specifically migration to New Zealand gives rise to around 2 billion of FX transactions annually, not to mention another 2 billion on the back of the large number of international students.

This is due in no small part to the New Zealand government actively developing immigration through strategic polices like the Retirement Visa Policy and the Silver Fern Policies, designed at attracting high income retirees and skilled workers respectively.

Big changes have also been made in the area of...

CurrencyFair is proud to be one of the companies sponsoring the Christchurch and Japan Earthquake Charity Rugby Match that will be held on Friday 29th April in Dublin at Old Belvedere RFC, Anglesea Road D4.

Kick-off is at 7pm where Irish and New Zealand invitation teams will compete to raise funds for all those affected by the natural disasters in Christchurch and Japan.

It will be a great evening of rugby with plenty of opportunities to donate to this very worthwhile cause, as well as have a few beers and a New Zealand BBQ!

Click here for more details.

I was having lunch with John Eales at Singleton Rugby Club the other day (okay, so were about 600 other people) and apart from telling some great stories about his time playing rugby for Australia, he talked about how the support from senior players and coaching staff he received early on helped him to achieve his goals. Two Rugby World Cups!!

Support and encouragement is just as important for any start-up business and CurrencyFair is no exception. Ireland is a great place to start a business; there is such a wealth of knowledge from seasoned entrepreneurs happy to share their experience as well as government-backed programmes dedicated to driving new growth and re-focusing Ireland’s plans for the future. We work closely with Enterprise Ireland here in Dublin and as we begin to expand our business outside of Ireland, specifically Australia and New Zealand, it reinforces the importance of these initiatives in taking Irish businesses global.

I recently attended great...

This week will see a change in Irish government for the first time since 1997. It seems Fianna Fáil, the outgoing party, has now been held accountable for the current state of the Irish economy resulting in the likely coalition of Fine Gael and Labour.

As an Aussie living in Ireland, I’ve always enjoyed the warm and hospitable good nature of the Irish. They will go out of their way to ensure you’re welcome, well fed and needless to say well watered! Trust me; you’ll never have a better time than out havin’ the craic with the Irish. But as a great man once said “the times they are a-changin’”, and what some may say is a legacy of the outgoing government means that many of us will get to return that hospitality, as emigration is proving a chosen alternative to the current situation.

Ireland has seen it before, but after a period of prosperity during which many Irish people returned home to further their careers and university graduates looked forward to finding Irish...

We recently received a heart-warming email from one of our customers delighted that they used CurrencyFair to pay for their wedding overseas. They saved a good deal of money and as a result were able to invite more people to the wedding than they had initially expected. We thought this was pretty cool. Just another example of real people making genuine savings.

Weddings are an expensive business, flowers, cakes, dresses, enough beef or salmon to feed a small army, not to mention the booze….it all adds up to a small fortune, so saving money is a welcome change. There are many reasons why organising a wedding can involve foreign currency transfers and that’s where CurrencyFair can help spread the love.

Take my friends getting married in Australia in March. As one of the couple is Irish this means a large contingent heading down under for the wedding and a fair amount of EUR being exchanged into AUD to pay for things like the reception, gifts, and accommodation. Family...