At Concordia University’s entrepreneurial community, District 3, its dedicated entrepreneurial hub, brought together the best of the Montreal FinTech scene this week.
District 3 hosted its FinTech Breakfast Parlay, where Montreal-based startups — including bankMe, Payment Rails, and Squares Union — pitched to a crowd of 80 bank executives and government officials. Kicking off with a keynote from Chadi Habib, CTO of Desjardins, the goal of the event was to discuss the priority of FinTech for banking institutions and bridge the gap between startups and these institutions.
“We have fantastic potential in Montreal,” said Xavier-Henri Hervé, executive director and co-founder of District 3. “The key to unlocking it all is ‘early adoption programs’. This was a great opportunity to start dialogue with Banking and Insurance to create early adoption channels for the Montreal Fintech startups products and services.”
District 3 said that events like this were important to tout Montreal as a FinTech centre in its own right, as Montreal startups run the risk of falling behind Toronto and Vancouver if they don’t continue to connect with the larger banks they’re disrupting. “It was incredibly humbling to have gathered together so many talented and passionate FinTech individuals from Montreal,” said Jan Arp, director of finance and administration at District 3. “More collaboration of this nature is needed if we are going to reach global impact.”