Podcast Ep 343: Fintech entrepreneur Lydia Foott left Ireland in 2010 with a degree and few options. 16 years later she has opened the Dublin office of her business Qashio, creating 50 new jobs and plans for European expansion. She tells her story.
The world moves in mysterious ways and for Cork native Lydia Foott, she never dreamed that one day a business she founded half a world away would be making Ireland a gateway to Europe.
Foott is the co-founder and chief executive of Qashio, a Dubai-based spend management platform that helps businesses to track and control spending through smart corporate cards linked to real-time expense software.
“Bringing Qashio back to Ireland is such a point of pride for me. When I left 16 years ago, I could never have imagined building something I’d one day bring home. It has been incredible”
Launched in 2022 the business services close to 3,000 customers and has partnered with major players Visa and Emirates.
In recent weeks Qashio opened its Dublin office to drive its European expansion, committing to creating 50 new jobs in Ireland over the next 12 to 18 months.
But when Foott graduated from the University of Limerick in 2010, things were very different for her and countless other graduates at the time. Ireland was deep in recession. Jobs were scarce and like thousands of her classmates – and many other Irish people when things go sour in the economy – she left.
Her plan was to do a year or two abroad. She ended up setting up a business.
Ireland: Fintech gateway to Europe
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“The idea came from our own experience,” she recalls. “Myself and my co-founder Armin [Moradi] were working at the same business, and we had just two corporate cards being shared across the entire organisation. There was a lot of leakage. At the end of the month, the credit card statement would be passed around the office and people would have to initial what was theirs. There were unclaimed spends everywhere. Armin would block off an hour a week just to give out OTPs (one-time passwords). If you needed to make an online purchase outside that window, you were stuck. It was highly inefficient. We looked at what companies like Brex and Ramp were doing in the US and decided to build something similar for Dubai. We went live in 2022.”
She recalls that starting a fintech in Dubai in 2022 required patience as much as product. While solutions of this kind were well-established in the US and parts of Europe, in the UAE the concept was new.
“Armin and I both came from food tech originally, which was where the tech scene in Dubai first took off. But the shift into fintech was rapid. We also had the advantage of having been in the market for a long time – I have been there for 16 years, Armin for 13 or 14 – so we had strong networks and understood the ecosystem well. Setting up was not the difficult part.
“There was a lot of education required in the early days. Solutions like ours had existed in Europe and the US for a few years by then, so there was some familiarity there. In Dubai, we were starting from scratch in terms of building trust and understanding around the product. People were skeptical, particularly where finance was involved.
“But similar to the Irish market, word of mouth is everything. Once people found something that worked, they told their networks. That really drove our growth. Today we have close to 3,000 customers in the UAE and around 400 to 500 in Europe.”
Scaling and operations
The Qashio founders and Dublin team at the recent Dublin Tech Summit
Foott and Moradi’s plan for Europe is to strike hard and fast and gain ground steadily.
To do this they appointed Irishman Kevin Gallagher to spearhead the operation. Gallagher has form. He previously scaled Workday’s commercial presence in Ireland and had grown Trulioo’s new business revenue in Europe by over 400%. His deep expertise in scaling operations and building strategic partnerships puts him in the driving seat to power Qashio’s advance on the continent.
“The control and visibility piece is central to everything,” Gallagher explained. “For companies of all sizes, understanding where money is being spent and why is a constant challenge. Qashio gives businesses real-time visibility into payments and puts them in control of spend across the organisation.
“Beyond that, all payments through the cards carry a reward element. That gives businesses genuine value back on necessary spend, and I think it will help us differentiate in the Irish market as well. There is also a trust dimension: businesses are looking for tools they can rely on, and that is a big part of what we are building here.”
Foott says the decision to establish in Ireland goes back to 2023 when an Irish entity was forged to support UAE customers with operations in Europe or who needed Euro and Sterling-denominated cards.
“It started to take off organically from there, and through 2025 we built out the solution properly and began preparing for a formal go-to-market in Europe.
“We decided late in 2025 that Dublin would be our European home. At Investopia in December, we announced we would open an office here, and we did open it in March. Kevin joined as general manager earlier this year and we have already hired into commercial roles. The next step is building out what we are calling Qashio Labs – an R&D and innovation hub in Dublin. That will become the centre of product development for the business. From there, Ireland is the launchpad into the wider European market, including the UK.”
€8 billion worth of reasons connect Ireland with Dubai
Qashio founders Armin Moradi and Lydia Foott
A core part of Qashio’s positioning is the strong business ties between Ireland and Dubai. “The Irish business community in Dubai is incredibly strong, and the political relationship between the two countries is also solid. There are real similarities: both are small countries, both have strong family values, and that shapes how people do business.
“Ireland is a country the UAE has earmarked as a strategic partner, and the €8 billion in bilateral trade is a reflection of that. I think there is an opportunity to build on what already exists, and Qashio sits right at that intersection.”
There is no avoiding the topic of the tensions in the Middle East, especially the ongoing blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. Foott is adamant that despite this, it is business as usual in the UAE.
“Certain sectors, particularly tourism, have been hit hard. But beyond that, the market has been remarkably resilient. We came through Covid very strongly, and I think businesses learned from that experience. What we have seen is people doubling down – working harder than ever to ensure the business keeps moving forward.
“Within our own team, the energy has been striking. Everyone is fighting the same fight: making sure that whatever is happening in the region impacts us as little as possible. It has been a great unifier, honestly.”
Foott says that “never in a million years” did she imagine that one day she would be creating jobs in her native land.
“I graduated from UL in 2010 with a degree in New Media and English, right in the height of the recession. Like so many of my graduating class, I left. The intention was to spend a year or two abroad and come back, but as soon as I arrived in Dubai, I understood that the quality of life there was exceptional.
“I started out teaching, which was a good entry point into the market. I did a part-time master’s at Middlesex University’s Dubai campus in the evenings while teaching during the day. From there I moved into tech – I joined Zomato when they were building out online food delivery in Dubai, an incredible period of triple-digit growth every month. I then moved into loyalty tech, then back into food tech under Delivery Hero. That’s where I first worked with Armin, and we always said we should do our own thing. In late 2021, he came to me with the idea for Qashio, and a few weeks later we found ourselves in a tiny WeWork office with barely room to turn around.
“Bringing Qashio back to Ireland is such a point of pride for me. When I left 16 years ago, I could never have imagined building something I’d one day bring home. It has been incredible.”
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Listen to the ThinkBusiness Podcast for business insights and inspiration. All episodes are here. You can also listen to the Podcast on:
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