Plynk goes plonk: Irish payment app looks set to go under

It promised much but Irish payment services group Plynk has come to the end of the road. The app that wanted to become synonymous with money transfers – “Plynk me the cash you owe me” – is to appoint a liquidator, some six months after it began experiencing “technical difficulties” that stopped it taking on new customers.

More serious was the lack of cash that meant the company essentially couldn’t pay its staff, many of whom appear to have already moved on.

It was a muted end to the company that, only a year ago, was trumpeting its massive fundraising round. A €25 million Series A put it ahead of the heights reached by tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter, and Irish-founded payment firm Stripe in their respective Series A funding rounds.

It was a stunning coup for the company. Plynk had 6,000 users and was planning great things. There were brand ambassadors. There was talk of more jobs. And then, just as suddenly as Plynk seemed to appear, things cooled. The mysterious private fund behind the €25 million pledge of funding withheld the next tranche of money and the problems began.

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A short ad in the classifieds section of Saturday's Irish Daily Mail alerted readers to a meeting at which the company would seek to appoint a liquidator.

Looking back at the events of the past few months, it was inevitable that Plynk would go out of business. Even if the company could come up with the interim funding it needed to keep going, there was the lack of staff to deal with.

Regardless of how founder Charles Dowd and his team progressed, the Plynk brand was tainted.

Dowd wasn't available to comment on the latest development, so it is not clear if this is part of a move to resurrect the firm and its idea or if it truly is the end of the line for Plynk. But with cofounder Clive Foley now working as lead technical architect with American software firm LiveTiles in Sligo, it seems that Plynk may finally have gone plonk.