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Webull launches stock trading app for retail investors in Canada
(BETAKIT)
Florida-based equity trading platform Webull has launched its brokerage service in Canada.
Webull’s entrance into the Canadian market puts the company up against the likes of other established FinTech companies, including Wealthsimple and Questrade.
Beyond the stock market trading, Webull also offers paper trading, an in-app way to practice fake trades on the stock market without using real money.
Chief executive of collapsed crypto fund HyperVerse does not appear to exist
(THE GUARDIAN)
A man named Steven Reece Lewis was introduced as the chief executive officer of the HyperVerse crypto fund at an online global launch event in December 2021.
A brief career summary of Reece Lewis, which was presented in a video launch for potential investors, said he had worked for Goldman Sachs, sold a web development company to Adobe and launched an IT start-up firm, before being recruited to head up HyperVerse by the HyperTech group.
There’s just one issue: no records exist of Steven Reece Lewis on the UK companies register, Companies House, or on the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Private open banking update: TD signs with Plaid, Xero signs with Flink
(BETAKIT)
Montréal-based, National Bank-owned FinTech firm Flinks has teamed up with New Zealand accounting software company Xero to give small businesses in Canada and the United States (US) access to direct, secure bank feeds.
Meanwhile, Toronto’s TD Bank—which competes with National Bank—has entered into a North American data-access agreement with US-based Flinks rival Plaid.
These private open banking deals come as Canadians continue to wait for open banking, which the federal government recently promised to introduce in legislation this year via Budget 2024.
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Federal government punts NRC IRAP’s merger into the Canada Innovation Corporation to 2026-2027
(BETAKIT)
The federal government has announced it will delay plans to fully implement the Canada Innovation Corporation (CIC) until after the next scheduled federal election.
The delay to 2026 at the earliest was revealed in a statement released by the Department of Finance, which also announced the government will begin its review of the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) program in January 2024, as well as plans to implement recommended improvements to the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) following a recent legislative review.
Toronto-based fintech Caary Capital eliminates credit card offering for SMEs
(THE LOGIC)
Caary Capital eliminated its credit card program for SMEs, saying in an email to customers that its new focus will be licensing its platform functionality to financial institutions issuing credit cards to SMEs instead.
Caary’s co-founder and CEO told BetaKit in November that “Caary has been rightsizing and re-focusing our strategy for several months now due to the market circumstances and realities facing companies like ours.”
Other FinTech companies have also pivoted away from SME offerings, such as Brex, who told BetaKit “the only way” it could dedicate resources to scaling companies “was to make that pivot away from SMBs.”
Assent CEO talks ESG’s growing impact on stakeholder, customer, and investor relationships
(BETAKIT)
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) accounting used to be a nice to have; now, it’s become a strategic necessity.
In a recent #CIBCInnovationBanking podcast episode, Andrew Waitman, CEO of Assent, explained how startup leaders can begin to craft an ESG strategy that drives business growth.
Investor Joe Canavan quietly backed startup financial tech companies through downturn
(THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
For decades, Joe Canavan had a reputation on Bay Street for turning around languishing asset managers.
But over the last 10 years, he has pivoted from managing to investing, piling millions of dollars of his own money into early-stage technology companies. This has quietly helped launch a slew of startups, even as the tech sector faced a steep downturn.
He has since become a prominent mentor to many young CEOs, particularly those in the FinTech space.
How to move the “big rock” of inclusion in tech
(BETAKIT)
Canadian tech is facing a deep tech talent shortage and government leaders tend to want to fill this gap with foreign talent. But plans to draw from the international worker pool ignore the talent in our own backyard, including underrepresented communities across Canada.
Pablo Listingart, Executive Director of digital skills school ComIT, shared with BetaKit what he’s learned is necessary to continue pushing inclusion forward.
Stripe Swings to a Profit as Business Rebounds
(THE INFORMATION)
Payments giant Stripe, a bellwether of the startup world, kept a lid on spending for engineers and salespeople this year after business slowed in 2022. Now it’s reaping the benefits: as revenue growth has re-accelerated, it’s making money again.
Shareholders clash with Ether Capital board, push for Bay Street crypto company’s wind-up
(THE LOGIC)
Prominent Toronto-based crypto company Ether Capital has spent five years searching for a business model that would earn shareholders a better rate of return than simply redistributing its Ether holdings to them.
Some shareholders are losing patience, and are pressuring the board to wind up the company.
Generative AI use in the workplace is growing unchecked, new Salesforce survey finds
(BETAKIT)
A new report from Salesforce suggests that the increasing use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in Canadian workplaces is mostly unsupervised.
Alongside 56 percent of the surveyed Canadians using unapproved generative AI tools at work, 28 percent said they have even used tools that were explicitly banned by their workplaces. As workers navigate generative AI in the workplace, 64 percent of global respondents admitted to passing off AI-generated work as their own.