The Fintech sector in Canada has been experiencing consistent growth in the recent years. So, we thought of sharing interesting information on the trending finance and technology innovations happening around. Let’s take a sneak peek into the Best 5 Canadian Fintech Startups to Watch in 2023 and their highlights.
What is a FinTech Company?
The word FinTech is an amalgamation of the terms Financial and Technology. Each and every industry across the world is embracing automation to quicken and improve their process and products. Similarly, the financial services industry has also adopted to automation and technology to innovate, quicken, and ease the usage of their services.
Fintech sprouted in the 21st century, where technology was introduced to financial services to simplify the process of business owners. However, as has recently emerged to become more customer-oriented these days.
Some examples of Fintech are mobile banking, cryptocurrencies, robot-advisory, e-lending, digital wallets etc.
Start-ups in Canada: An Overview
Nowadays, Canada is touted as the Silicon Valley of the north for it has been developing its start-up culture meticulously. A start-up is basically a company or a firm that is in its initial stages of operations. It funds capital via friends, families, venture capitalist and bank loans. A healthy start-up environment is important for a country for institutes healthy competition in markets, offers employment opportunities, aids in innovation, improves productivity etc.
Canada has established a strong start-up culture via various programs such as Digital Media Zone, NextAI, Venture Capital Action Plan, Comminitech, Startup Canada etc. The federal government of Canada has contributed to this by offering tax incentives, grants, wage subsidies, loans and star-up visas.
Best Fintech Startups in Canada 2023
Here’s a list of the popular and fast-growing fintech startups in the Canadian landscape.
1. KOHO Financial
KOHO introduced itself as a fintech company that aims to offer better financial solutions to Canadians. You can open both personal account and a joint account with KOHO. It offers an interest rate of 1.2%, unlimited e-transfers and mandates no minimum balance. Just like a bank deposit, your deposits in KOHO are protected by CDIC. KOHO is basically an alternative to a bank chequing account at a competitive price range and with appealing features.
| Description | KOHO | KOHO Premium | KOHO Joint |
| Account Keeping Fees | $0 | $84 per annum or $9 per month | $0 |
| Cashback offers | 0.5% on all purchases | 0.5% on all purchases & 2% on transportation, groceries, and restaurants. | 0.5% on all purchases |
| Other features | Roundups | No foreign exchange conversion fees | Shared finances |
| Lock your card | Roundups | Roundups | |
| Virtual card | Financial coaching | Alerts when your partner spends | |
| Price matching | Shared savings | ||
| 1 free international ATM withdrawal every month |
Koho, a full-service spending and saving account also offers pre-paid, reloadable Mastercard and an integrated app. The Koho debit-style card is often referred as virtual credit card and is packed with some great cashback and other features.
2. Payfirma
Payfirma is a Canada based payment process company that aims to aid users to pay in anyway, from anywhere, and at any time. With Payfirma, you can make payments in websites, card machine, mobile and at e-commerce points. It automates invoicing systems, where the bill is sent as link through which payment is to be made and it can be tracked as well.
With Integrations API, you can integrate your shopping cart, hosted payment page, or eCommerce platform with our open API and start securely accepting payments in your digital environments. You can set up direct debits for recurring bills. The data provided to the company is safely protected in cloud platform.
3. Wealthsimple
Wealthsimple is a fin-tech company that offers manual trading account, robo-advisory, crypto currency trading platform, tax-filing and cash account. Although Wealthsimple is a famous trading platform that is best known for its zero-trading commission. We are to look out for Wealthsimple in 2023, as it is the first non-banking, no-credit union company that received a green signal on 18th October 2022, to access to real-time rail payments from the Bank of Canada.
Real Time Rail Payment System is set to revolutionise the payment process in Canada and aims to enable customers to send and receive payments and money within a few seconds, 24/7 and 365 days a year. Whilst being quick, it also concentrates on security of funds. With access to RTR, we can expect Wealthsimple to innovate and offer new products and services in 2023.
4. Mogo
Mogo is an e-lending platform that was established in 2003 as an alternative to banks. It is not a bank but is a FINTRAC regulated and publicly traded company, listed in Toronto Stock Exchange. We have listed the services offered by Mogo:
- Free credit score based on Equifax bureau.
- Fixed and variable mortgage. In order to be eligible for loan, you need to be above the age of majority, resident of Canada, have a credit score above 540, receive an annual income of $13,000 or more and must have a stable employment.
- With Mogo Crypto, you can purchase and sell bitcoins.
- Mogo Card is a pre-paid credit card with a maximum credit balance of $10,000. It is a Visa platinum card.
- Mogo Money
- Mogo Protect offers fraud protection.
5. Trulioo
With increase in automation in every industry, identity verification has become an important step to open any financial account in order to avoid fraud. Trulioo is headquartered at Vancouver and was founded in 2011 by Stephen Ufford and Tanis Jorge. It is an electronic identity and address verification business that was first utilised by Google, Facebook and Linkedin. However, it is widely being used in financial services companies, wealth management companies, brokerage firms, remittance providers, payment processing companies and banks these days.
While other fintech start-ups enhance customer experience, using Trulioo improves business practices. It eases onboarding of customers, complies and aids following Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer rules, helps mitigate risk and increases trust.
It offers features such as identity verification, AML watchlist and screening, ID validation, facial recognition, liveliness detection and business verification. It uses 400 plus data sources from across the world, dedicated customer service team, 24/7 client support, advanced analytics, and customized reporting.
Also, discover important benefits and types of Small Business Insurance in Canada.
Canadian Fintech Start-ups
Fintech start-ups enhance innovation, democratize economics, save time, reduce cost, and make financial services inclusive and accessible to all. However, it is important to note that privacy should be of utmost importance in the fintech arena , so as to diminish chances of cyber-attacks.
Proper mechanisms must be followed to protect individuals to protect from any threat on security of funds. And, that’s what emerging fintech newbies are working upon! To provide a secure and user-friendly digital experience. What do you think?
Though not a fintech, but a new and amazing entrant in the list of Canadian startups – UrbanTasker ! Get Free Quotes from expert home service providers and save your time and money both.
Do you have any other Fintech companies to add to our list? Email us your interesting Fintech Story and get featured on our list of Emerging and Best Canadian Fintech Startups.