John Ryan’s mum worked as a postmistress in Wexford town for more than 20 years and, from early childhood, Ryan watched people queuing for their pensions every week. This need for money to settle one’s bills impressed itself on him at an early age and made him wise beyond his years about the importance of cash flow and prompt payments.
Fast forward four decades and Ryan’s early exposure to the payments process has come full circle, as he now heads up PayEd – Education in Payments, a training company focused on making individuals and organisations a lot more savvy about getting paid. This might seem like something people should know already, but Ryan says more often than not they don’t, with potentially significant personal and commercial consequences.
In his view there is a mismatch between what people know and what they need to know about the rapidly changing world of payments. In 2021 he founded PayEd to fill the gap in payments education.
“The payments landscape is constantly evolving, with changes in regulation and major shifts in technology,” says Ryan, who has lived in Australia for the last 23 years. “This is driving new payments solutions and methods which can be quite complex, yet people are supposed to be able to navigate what’s happening with little or no training. Payments is not recognised as a professional discipline in its own right and is not widely available for study at any level within the majority of education systems. I felt this needed to be addressed, and that PayEd was the solution.”
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Ryan has spent all of his working life in finance, having studied accountancy and finance at DCU before leaving Ireland for London in 1998 to work as an accounting business analyst with the Nasdaq-listed capital markets technology company, Broadridge. Two years later the company sent him to Sydney to help set up an office there and he has never left. He has three children and lives in Newcastle, about two hours north of Sydney by train.
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Ryan spent 17 years with Broadridge, ending up as head of business development and strategy for Australasia before a regional restructuring in 2016 gave him the opportunity to take a redundancy package and launch a new career as an entrepreneur.
Looking back, it’s been a great period of personal and professional growth and I’ve thrived on the experience
“From the time I was a student, I was always looking for ways of joining the dots and improving processes and I was fortunate in having a corporate career that allowed me to continue to do this, so I was always sewing entrepreneurial seeds at some level,” he says. “But when you hit the point where you actually have the chance to do something about it, it can be a good time for reflection, but also a bit daunting.
“However, looking back, it’s been a great period of personal and professional growth and I’ve thrived on the experience.”
Ryan started his first business soon after leaving Broadridge when he co-founded fintech sales consultancy Suite2Go, with which he is still involved. Two years later, he co-founded the Emerging Payments Association Asia, and PayEd followed three years later.
“Payments is a nascent tech industry which is fast moving and lacking in standards and co-ordination,” Ryan adds. “All around the world we are seeing major banks, financial institutions, payment companies, fintechs and companies in all sectors making major announcements outlining their goals to move into a future of digital payments. PayEd bridges the knowledge, preparedness and innovation gaps in this rapidly moving sector for students, professionals, organisations and companies.
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“In my view education is the key to the competent, ethical, and innovative transformation of an industry that has an impact on the daily lives of each and every one of us.”
PayEd’s courses cover the whole spectrum of factors playing into the payments process including cybersecurity, regulation and ecommerce. The company’s courses, which run globally with particular focus on APAC (Asia Pacific), Asia, and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), are mainly delivered live online.
“We essentially cover three levels,” Ryan says. “The fundamentals which provide an overview for those new to working in payments; in-focus training for those who want to develop specialist knowledge in a given area such as cybersecurity, and executive or strategic level courses which are bespoke based on an organisation’s needs.”
I still feel a strong connection to Ireland and I’m always immensely proud of Irish people who’ve achieved success on the world stage
When he’s not working the long hours typical of a start-up, Ryan likes to mountain bike and run.
“I left Ireland for better professional opportunities and while my company sent me to Australia for what was supposed to be an 18-month assignment, the day I arrived I went on the Manly ferry and decided I never wanted to leave. I had found my home from home,” he says.
“Australia was so welcoming and felt like the land of great opportunity. It is a primary producer of commodities which gives the country great strength and security and it also has a strong currency as a result. The lifestyle is good and as long as you can handle the rat race, you can have a golden life here.”
Asked what he misses about home, Ryan says it’s taxi drivers telling you their life story on the journey from Dublin Airport and the opportunity to slip into a quiet pub in town for a pint. “I still feel a strong connection to Ireland and I’m always immensely proud of Irish people who’ve achieved success on the world stage – like the Collison brothers who continue to lead the world in ecommerce and digital payments,” he says.
