Fife College and private sector create fintech course

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Fintech firms in Fife are collaborating with Fife Council to create a new “payments academy”.

Fife is a hotbed of innovation in the payments industry with several firms developing software that processes ATM transactions, card payments and e-commerce purchases for banks and consumers globally.

However, recruiting and training graduates is a problem for some of the smaller start-up firms. This has led to a number of software firms collaborating to create the new academy with the local authority.

Jim Tomaney from Renovite Technologies explains: “The success of this industry in Fife is down to the network effect of many related, and often competing, companies being co-located.

“This leads to an availability of talent in the marketplace that allows companies to grow and allows staff to expand their knowledge as they move between companies.

“Traditionally, the talent pool was topped up each year by the graduate intake at large employers but that no longer happens in the same way.

“For smaller, innovative companies like my own, this is a challenge as we are not big enough on our own to recruit and train a class of new trainees each year. This has led us to the initiative with Fife Council.”

The intensive course will be offered to recent graduates or current students to give them a grounding in the end-to-end payments industry before they start as trainees in a software company.

A number of smaller software companies in Fife, including those that see each other as competitors in the marketplace, are collaborating to put new starts through the programme.

Mr Tomaney added: “The idea is that we all commit our new entrant to the academy programme. An understanding of the whole end-to-end payments processing model is important for the students to be productive in their new jobs.”

Iain Shirlaw, economic advisor at Fife Council, added: “Fife led the world in developing early digital payment systems.

“This initiative will increase the number of high skilled jobs and attract other fintech companies to Fife.”

Renovite Technologies in Dunfermline is one of the firms backing the payments academy scheme in Fife.