EML Payments has extended the contract of interim chief executive Kevin Murphy until the end of June as it works through the restructuring of the group. Murphy, a former managing director of the Bank of Ireland, has been in the role since April last year, when EML sacked CEO Emma Shand. Shand was hired in July 2022 to develop a turnaround plan for the struggling company but the board rejected her plan and showed her the door. In January, EML announced that it had put its Irish subsidiary PFS Card Services Ireland Ltd into liquidation, after a strategic review of the business concluded that it was “no longer commercially viable or sustainable”.  It said challenges facing the business included ongoing delays in the completion of regulatory remediation work, deteriorating trading performance, sustained losses and cash burn, and difficulty attracting staff. It also announced that it was in discussions to sell Sentenial Ltd, which has not performed up to expectations since it was acquired in 2021. Sentenial provides real-time payment services to UK and European banks. It also has a subsidiary, Nuapay that operates in the open banking market. In a statement yesterday, the company said: “The change in business composition, namely a significant reduction in Irish and European operations, together with the board’s more advanced view of the underlying operations of the business gained over the past 12 months has modified the key selection criteria underpinning EML’s CEO recruitment process.” EML released its December half results yesterday, reporting higher revenue and a smaller loss. Revenue rose 30 per cent year-on-year to A$150.7 million. However, much of the increase came from interest on more than $2 billion of segregated accounts held for prepaid and gift card customers.  Without that, the revenue from contracts with customers was up a little. The company said it had revenue growth in all business units: gift cards, general purpose reloadable cards; and digital payments. After including an impairment of $121.4 million in its December 2022 half-year results, the company reported a loss of $129.9 million. In the latest half, impairments were a modest $9.3 million and the loss was $12.4 million. While total expenses were down, the company wants to do better on “cost optimisation” and will accelerate work in this area in the period ahead.