Trim, Progressa, Koho, BitGold & Amber
Check out the July 2016 edition of the Fintech Five.
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The Fintech Five powered by PayPal profiles five of the hottest and most promising financial technology companies across Canada each month. The list is curated by Techvibes editorial staff and reflects who is making waves in our nation’s fintech ecosystem right now.
We’ve all spent money on subscriptions that we don’t need. In some cases, it’s due to procrastination – after all, companies make it much easier to sign up than to cancel their service. Other times, we simply forget about an old recurring payment as it quietly debits money away from our account each month.
Trim has built a money-saving robot that starts by cancelling those unwanted subscriptions. First, it pulls in your data from bank accounts/credit cards and identifies your subscription payments. It then sends you a text message of all your listed subscriptions followed by instructions on how to unsubscribe from those you don’t really want or use any more. Smart.
Progressa, an online lending platform focused on non-prime and near-prime consumers, just announced they will be shifting their entire lending operations over to a newly opened Toronto office which in just one month has grown to over 20 employees with over 1,500 applicants fielded.
The move allows Progressa to capitalize on the growing fintech cluster in Toronto and the company’s association with the MaRS Fintech Cluster. Progressa will continue to operate management oversight from their Vancouver office while looking to expand the lending operations in Toronto.
Koho recently announced the close of a second round of funding led by Power Financial Corporation (TSX:PWF). The round had strong follow-on participation from previous investors and also included Scott Lake (Co-Founder of Shopify) and David Tedman (Co-Founder of Hootsuite).
Koho, through its mobile application and Visa prepaid card, offers the ‘core features’ of day-to-day spending and saving, including direct deposit, bill pay, ATMs, and transfers, as well as its own unique features, such as real-time updates, automated budgets and savings, and personalized goals. Users’ deposits are held through Koho’s partnership with Peoples Trust, while the Visa network provides the ability to make purchases everywhere.
BitGold helps people securely acquire, store, and spend gold. BitGold provides users with a secure vault account to purchase and hold gold, the ability to make and receive instant gold payments, and a prepaid card for spending gold at traditional points of sale or converting your gold balance to local currency at any ATM.
In response to the BitGold platform’s rapid growth, owner and operator Goldmoney (TSX: XAU) has consolidated its operating entities and established the merged operations as Goldmoney. While the ‘BitGold’ brand will be phased out, its IT framework will continue to be enhanced and applied to three operating segments: Personal, Business, and Wealth.
Amber Financial Services is shaking up the traditional Fintech lending model by providing loans to people that existing Fintech companies can’t seem to qualify: immigrants. Since Amber’s inception, the company has helped hundreds of immigrants to Canada process over $25 million in loans. Their goal is to hit $100 million in loans by the end of the year.
Amber Financial Services raised a $5 million seed round last month and that will go a long way to help an estimated 250,000 new immigrants that come to Canada each year without a credit history.
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With PayPal‘s 184 million active customer accounts globally and 6.4 million in Canada, we have created an open and secure payments ecosystem that people and businesses choose to securely transact with each other online, in stores and on mobile devices.
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