TRANSFORMING CALGARY INTO A HUB FOR FINTECH INNOVATION The Digital Commerce Calgary Fintech Award helps local fintech companies get the jumpstart they need to succeed. Launching and growing a new business is difficult. Entrepreneurs often struggle to raise funds, build connections, and get exposure for themselves and their product or services. That’s why the Digital Commerce Calgary Fintech Award proves to be a game changer — and the inaugural winners of the award demonstrate that. Two financial technology startups took home a grand total of $310,000 last year to accelerate their businesses. Fillip Fleet and
Woveo (formerly called Miq), the first place and runner-up competitors, respectively, won North America’s largest fintech award. The award and program is a partnership between Digital Commerce Group of Companies — including DC Bank — headquartered in Calgary and Platform Calgary, a hub for Calgary’s tech ecosystem that supports founders from ideation to scale. Jeffrey Smith and Susan Anderson, co-founders of DC Bank, support the Calgary Fintech Award as a way to help local fintech founders and ensure talent stays in Calgary. When they started their original fintech business in Calgary in 1997, they found it challenging to find investment, resources and support. Through
the award, Smith hopes that other local fintech companies can access what they need to launch and grow their companies in Calgary. Digital Commerce Group of Companies has committed more than $1 million over four years to support fintech startups through the Calgary Fintech Award, and it’s off to a fruitful start. Fillip, a digital-first payment platform for business fleets that allows drivers to pay for fuel and maintenance expenses through a secure digital wallet, made huge strides in growth as a result of winning the top prize. “It’s $250,000 of non-diluted funding, and it had great impact on our business,” says Alice Reimer, Fillip’s CEO. “We’ve been able to recruit, train and retain some amazing folks. Winning the Calgary Fintech Award has allowed us to add incremental headcount to our organization so we can actually work to capture leads not only through inbound sales, but build our growth strategy through outbound sales.” For Reimer, winning the award also validated the work Fillip is doing to bring a digital-first, mobile-first experience to a traditional industry. “The fuel card industry has not changed in 40 years,” she says. “We're really leading the digital transformation of the fleet fuel card industry to enable the energy transition.” She adds that VISA took notice of the fact that they won the award
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ELYSE BOUVIER
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