Computer scientist Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” While Kay uttered those words many years ago, Calgary’s Helcim is taking baby steps toward that goal today with the release of a product that its founder says envisions a future for the payments industry based on open choice.
“We started Helcim because we saw how banks were treating a lot of merchants and taking them for granted.”
Nic Beique, Helcim
Nic Beique, Helcim’s founder and CEO, told BetaKit that he sees Helcim Payment Extension, which launched on Thursday, as the first step to putting businesses in control of their financial transactions.
“It’s a browser extension that enables merchants to automate their payment workflows through existing software,” Beique said from behind a standing desk, flanked by prints of the Canadian Rockies.
Even on a video call, Beique gave off a kind of frenetic energy as he explained how the browser extension circumvents the so-called “walled gardens” that are increasingly prevalent in software. To the uninitiated, the term refers to a platform or ecosystem where a provider restricts external access, promoting its built-in services as the sole option and creating a “walled-off” environment.
“An extreme example would be if Microsoft forced you to use their banking services in order to use Microsoft Office,” Beique said. “That’s effectively what’s started to happen in the [software-as-a-service] world.”
Founded in Calgary in 2006, Helcim provides in-person and online payment processing for small and medium-sized businesses across North America. An early flagstone in Calgary’s then-burgeoning FinTech hub, the company Beique founded after teaching himself to code as a teen has gone on to raise $27 million in Series B funding and was recently named among Canada’s top-growing companies in 2025.
With its new payment extension, Beique said users can integrate Helcim’s payment processing into web-based business software like Jane or Jobber that they may already be using, allowing transaction data to flow between the preexisting software and Helcim’s payment interface, regardless of whether the software is walled off.
With 20 compatible integrations available right off the bat (including three official partnerships to be announced soon), Helcim plans to onboard more than 100 platforms by the end of 2026. The company is already working toward releasing an AI-first iteration of the extension this spring.
“That … will enable [clients] to build their own integrations on the fly,” Beique said. “It will mean it doesn’t matter how niche the software they’re using is; if they want to build that automation, they can.”
Open systems or walled gardens?
If it sounds like Beique’s excited about the launch, he is. But it’s the opportunity it presents to disrupt the status quo that’s really got the founder worked up.
Debate over open systems versus walled garden models isn’t new. The finance industry has been arguing over the merits for years, most predominantly around the idea of consumer-driven banking, which would allow individuals or businesses to share financial data with third-party providers. (Like, say, FinTech apps.)
Historically, Canada’s banking system hasn’t favoured the consumer-driven model, but in its 2025 budget, the federal government signalled shifts toward being more open-banking friendly. Advocates have called for a broader open finance model, beyond just banking, that would bring increased competition (and, theoretically, increased affordability) to other parts of the industry, like mortgages, insurance, and payments.
Helcim’s product launch, allowing for payment software portability, coincided with the release of a report from the Competition Bureau on the value of data portability for consumers and businesses. The report found that allowing Canadians to securely move and access their insurance data across different service providers could save them more than $1.1 billion annually in that industry alone. It said the potential savings from allowing this type of portability across the economy would likely be much greater.
That shift in attitudes, alongside strides in AI, makes now an ideal time to launch this product if the goal isn’t only providing service to Helcim’s customers, but moving the needle on the open systems debate into the payments space, too.
“We started Helcim because we saw how banks were treating a lot of merchants and taking them for granted, whether through pricing or experience or functionality,” Beique says. “That same dynamic applies to software and payments and embedded finance, which really should be based on merit.”
The tech sector’s battle over choice
Having essentially built a 12-foot ladder where once there stood a 10-foot walled garden, the launch of Helcim’s extension can be seen as a kind of opening salvo in a battle over freedom of choice that Beique said is beginning to play out across the entire tech sector.
“There’s a lot of money being invested and business models made with an assumption of having a walled garden around a platform, customer base, or technology set. Ultimately, I don’t think that’s worked in the interest of the consumer or small business user, but in the interest of the platform,” Beique said. “What’s interesting about the next decade is that the AI and technology shift is reopening that debate. Assumptions around walled gardens are going to start crumbling.”
If that comes to pass, it’ll be good news for a company like Helcim, which stands to gain as one of those at the vanguard of the movement. It will also likely inspire a great many copycats and increased competition for the company. Beique is welcoming that.
“Whenever you can increase the temperature of competition, that ultimately rolls down to benefitting the consumer and small business owners. I think [this product] is going to make people go from taking something for granted to actually having to compete,” he said. “People are going to have to start looking at whether they want to make more serious investments in order to bring the best rather than just assuming the cookie-cutter model.”
Not all of Helcim’s peers may be as thrilled with Beique’s flagrant support for tearing down the industry’s iron curtains. But if Beique is stepping on toes, he’s only doing so because he genuinely believes in the mantra that the market knows best.
“What’s really exciting about this is that it brings the power of choice and optionality back to the end user, which ultimately forces everyone to compete on service. That, I think, is the best way for the markets to thrive and the customer to get the best service,” he says. “May the best payment service win.”
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
With files from Josh Scott.
All images courtesy Helcim.