San Francisco-based FinTech company Finix has officially launched its business payments solution in the Canadian market.
Canada marks the first international launch for Finix. In a statement sent to BetaKit, Finix CEO and co-founder Richie Serna said the firm launched a private production beta in the country last year after finding Canada was underserved in terms of integrated payments.
“Adding to our international footprint with our Canadian expansion helps even more businesses drive revenue while streamlining operations.”
“We’ve talked to a number of customers and prospects who’ve had to piece together fragmented payment processing solutions across multiple providers in Canada to meet their customers’ needs,” Serna said in a separate statement.
“Adding to our international footprint with our Canadian expansion helps even more businesses drive revenue while streamlining operations,” he added.
Founded in 2015, Finix aims to help businesses of all sizes process payments and send or receive money. The company says its solution includes tools like embedded compliance, underwriting, fraud monitoring, reporting, dispute management, and others, to give businesses a better view of their transaction-level data.
Finix currently serves companies like parking management firm Passport and club management software firm Clubessential. Finix also has direct integrations with payment networks like Mastercard, Visa, American Express, and Discover.
With the new launch, Finix says Canadian businesses can enhance their payment stack both in Canada and the US. The same goes for US businesses looking to expand into Canada.
Companies like Stripe facilitate multinational payments in the US and Canada. However, a Finix spokesperson claimed that these players don’t currently allow businesses to monetize payments by embedding payments into their product experience. A representative from Stripe confirmed to BetaKit that Stripe does offer embedded payments including to platforms like Shopify and other partners.
“Companies like Toast, Shopify, and software companies in nearly every vertical are effectively turning a historical cost centre into a profit centre by offering payment acceptance to their sellers, retailers, service providers, or gig providers,” Serna added. “They do this by partnering with a payment processor like Finix who shares the economic benefit back with the software company.”
Finix has raised over $100 million USD from American Express Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Homebrew, Inspired Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Visa, and others.
The company is operating in a market currently dominated by large players, like Stripe, but also includes up-and-coming Canadian startups, like Calgary-based Helcim, which closed $27 million CAD in Series B financing this week. Like Finix, Helcim has also built a comprehensive payment processing solution that also includes capabilities like fraud detection and underwriting.
“Finix is an acquiring processor with direct connections to all the major card networks, [such as] Visa, Mastercard, Amex, [and] Discover,” Serna said. “Many payment companies are built on top of an acquiring processor like Finix.”
According to Helcim’s terms of service, processing firm Elavon is contracted to submit sales drafts and transaction information to the payment associations on behalf of Helcim and to receive and pay Helcim settlement funding for such sales transactions.
Finix’s Canadian launch is being supported by bank partner Peoples Trust Company, which has previously partnered with Canadian startup Koho (though Koho is now pursuing its own banking license). “Finix’s secure, fast, and reliable payment solution helps businesses remove friction from existing multinational payment processes and unlock the potential to increase efficiency, drive growth, and improve cash flow,” Jeremy Bornstein, chief revenue officer at Peoples Group, said in a statement.
Feature image courtesy Finix.