February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — Two County Wicklow brothers are set to become multi-millionaires next month when their e-commerce Trintech company becomes the first Irish business to be floated on the German Neuer Markt and U.S. Nasdaq stock exchanges.
Trintech, which employs 250 on four continents, was founded in 1986 by Cyril McGuire, 38, and his brother John, 37, who are from Bray.
Though no price details have been issued yet for the quarter of the company being floated, the two brothers are expected by analysts to end up with a paper fortune of more than _40 million.
The unusual German-U.S. dual float results from the amount of business they do in both countries.
The company initially specialized in developing payment software for credit card transactions but it has since expanded into e-commerce and provides solutions for electronic end-to-end security — from consumer to merchant to financial institutions.
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The potential of the electronic market is enormous. It is estimated it will be worth $1.6 trillion by 2003.
This year, the company’s PayWare technology was used for the world’s first Euro transaction.
Alliances and partnerships have been the key to Trintech’s success.
Companies such as Netscape, SAP, Compaq, Verisign, Entrust and Sun Microsystems have endorsed their solutions and integrated them into their products.
Trintech has a longstanding partnership with Visa, the world’s largest credit card company. It has already become an investor in the company, the first time it made such a move.
The McGuires are part of a family of twelve from Bray and demonstrated their entrepreneurial skills at an early age.
While in university, John ran a thriving Christmas tree importing business which remains one of the country’s biggest and Cyril helped with his college funds by running discos.
At Trinity College studying maths, electronic engineering and business management, John developed an encrypted device which provided the original business device. AT UCD, Cyril studied commerce and business.