Shaype has chosen Belfast to lead OmniRail, a £2.4 million payments R&D project that will create four jobs, a product owner and three senior engineers, as reported by Love Belfast. The Australian embedded finance company picked its Northern Ireland office in the Scottish Provident Building over its other offices, and the work will be delivered locally by Hay Technology Limited, the UK subsidiary of Shaype Group.

OmniRail aims to make international digital payments smarter, faster and more secure. Rather than building a separate connection for every country they operate in, businesses will plug in once and reach payment systems across multiple markets.

The structural driver is businesses having to build a separate connection for every country they operate in. Artificial intelligence will be used to sharpen fraud detection and improve how payments are routed and authorised, with the aim of enhancing operational efficiency.

“OmniRail is at the heart of our international expansion strategy,” said David Woodburn, Global Chief Technology Officer at Shaype. “We chose Northern Ireland for this project because of the strength of its technology sector and the skilled talent that we have worked with here since 2019.”

Woodburn said the project will build on technology Shaype has already developed, creating “a more intelligent and flexible platform” for clients. He added that it has the potential to strengthen the company’s offering, open up new markets and support growth internationally.

Shaype runs an embedded finance and payments platform that lets banks, fintechs and larger businesses launch and operate financial products such as accounts, cards and payments. It has had staff in Belfast since 2019.

Founded in 2018 and based in Sydney, Shaype was formerly known as Hay as a Service, as stated by Startup Daily, and has offices in Sydney, London, Belfast, Glasgow and Warsaw, according to Fintech Australia. It closed an A$33 million (approximately €18 million) Series C round in 2022, led by Regal Funds Management, reported by Finextra.

For the sector, the project reflects payments providers using AI to simplify multi-market connectivity, with fraud detection and routing decisions built into a single integration.