NCFA Fintech Confidential October 2021 (Issue 4)

INSIDER VIEWS, INNOVATION AND BEST PRACTICES
VOL. 1, ISSUE 4 | OCTOBER 2021
FEATURED
BRACING FOR CHANGE IN
THE ERA OF AUGMENTED
WORKFORCE
MONETIZING THE
CREATOR ECONOMY
Through Social Tokens
STATE OF CHALLENGER
BANKING in Canada
ALTERNATIVE FORMS
OF CAPITAL WILL BE KEY
To Develop Sustainable
Economic Systems
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
SECURITY TOKENS And
Why This Time It’s for Real
SPECIAL: FFCON21 BREAKING BARRIERS
FINTECH DRAFT WINNERS
FINALIST PROFILES
2020-21 DRAFT PICKS
CANADIAN DIRECTORY
MORE INSIDE: Open Banking • Hiring Talent • Cyber Risks •
Decentralization • Digital Identity • Crowdfunding’s Impact •
Crypto Payments • Unlocking Wealth • Stablecoins • PBOC
Whitepaper • Power of Psychometrics
Cover: Cathy Hackl, Godmother of the Metaverse
INSIGHTS FROM
Minerva.ai Republic.co Rich Thinking StableCorp Future Earth TAAL University of Waterloo The Crowdfunding Hub CloudTree
Luge Capital Finliti Crypto Assets Institute FGS PayTechs of Canada CoinPayments Forward Security bloXmove Liquid Avatar

Dear Global Fintech & Funding Communities,
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association of Canada (NCFA) and partners are excited
to present Vol. 1 Issue 4, FINTECH CONFIDENTIAL, a digital pop-up of the 7th annual 2021
Fintech & Financing Conference and Expo (FFCON21) held virtually from May 11-13 and cohosted
by NCFA and Toronto Finance International (TFI).
As global economies strive to contain the latest Covid outbreak and recover fragile sectors,
fintech innovators continue to ‘BREAK BARRIERS’, the main theme of this year’s conference,
and the second year in partnership with TFI, reflecting the growth and emerging challenges
that the Canadian Fintech industry must navigate to achieve mass adoption and scale. Fintech
is not a niche but a permanent technological evolution that is changing the world of finance by
high growth fintech companies and incumbent financial institutions. It’s setting new standards
and demanding new regulations. It’s about delivering better financial products, services, and
outcomes for everyone especially consumers and small to midsize enterprises (SMEs).
It’s been another unprecedented year with covid accelerating trends such as bitcoin’s
institutionalization, the growing power of retail investors, the 2nd round of Open Banking
consultations and the advisory committee’s recommendations to the federal government,
payment modernization efforts, adoption of harmonized Crowdfunding regulation, AI
roadmap, emergence of digital identity as a ‘right’ and core data infrastructure (ie., vaccine
passports), growing support for Purpose (not just shareholder profit), green finance solutions
tackling shared global problems such as SDGs and climate change, EDI (equality, diversity and
inclusion), and regulatory push back and a firm ‘line in the sand’ for Big Tech.
FFCON21 was a successful event attracting over 100+ thought leaders, 75 partners, 500+
attendees, an NFT charity fundraiser in partnership with CanadaHelps for front line workers,
and our second annual 2021 Fintech Draft competition -- a pitching event inspired by sports
league drafts and designed to identity emerging high growth fintech ventures. A hearty
congratulations to the winners: Agryo (Overall) and Copia Wealth Studios (People’s Choice)!
Thank you to all the partners, speakers, attendees, volunteers, and the entire organizing team
for making ‘Breaking Barriers’ an impactful and amazing online experience and for being part
of Canada’s fintech and funding community. We hope you enjoy reading this special edition of
Fintech Confidential. Please consume responsibility and share with your networks.
Finally, we continue to encourage the community to be mindful of others, and to do the right
thing. Dream big, be open to partnerships, and execute like your life depends on it -- it’s not
too late to participate. The world is changing because of you but there is a long bridge to
cross, and more glass ceilings to break. Onwards and upwards…
All the best
Craig Asano
Founder and CEO
NCFA Canada

TABLE OF CONTENTS
FEATURED
01 07 10 12 14
BRACING FOR
CHANGE IN THE
ERA OF THE
AUGMENTED
WORKFORCE
MONETIZING THE
CREATOR ECONOMY
THROUGH SOCIAL
TOKENS
ALTERNATIVE
FORMS TO
CAPITAL WILL BE
KEY TO DEVELOP
SUSTAINABLE
ECONOMIC
SYSTEMS
STATE OF
CHALLENGER
BANKING IN
CANADA
A BRIEF
HISTORY OF
SECURITY TOKENS
AND WHY THIS
TIME IT’S FOR REAL
INSIDER VIEWS
18
PAYING FOR COFFEE WITH
CRYPTO? GET READY, THE FUTURE
OF PAYMENTS IS ALREADY HERE
20
IS THE FINTECH POLICY
AGENDA OVERRATED? IT
DEPENDS ON WHO’S ASKING
24
HOW CROWDFUNDING
CAN SUPPORT A
POST-COVID WORLD
26
Q&A WITH FINTECH
INVESTOR DAVID NAULT,
CO-FOUNDER & GENERAL
PARTNER, LUGE CAPITAL
BEST PRACTICE
28
31
34
36
KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER AND OBLIGATIONS IN
THE AGE OF REAL-TIME RAILS AND OPEN BANKING
HOW TO GROW
YOUNG FINTECH TALENT
7 ELEMENTS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE
FINTECH COMPANIES
TECHNOLOGY DUE DILIGENCE PROCESS
AND CYBER RISKS FOR FINTECH START-UPS
IN FOCUS
50
54
56
58
60
CANADIEN BLOOMING. THE FERTILE
“VALLEY” FOR FINANCE INNOVATION
HOW STABLE IS YOUR
STABLECOIN?
PBOC WHITE PAPER: E-CNY’S PATH TO
CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS
TAAL BRINGS ORDER AND LEADERSHIP
TO THE WORLD OF BLOCKCHAIN
THE HOLT XCHANGE KICKS OFF 2021
INVESTMENT PROGRAM
TRENDING
40
42
44
48
64 FFCON21
PARTNERS & IMPACT
66
68
70
74
THE EVOLVING DIGITAL
IDENTITY LANDSCAPE
WEALTH OWNERS CAN UNLOCK
INSIGHTS WITH MACHINE LEARNING
HOW DECENTRALIZED TECHNOLOGIES
ARE TRANSFORMING PLATFORM ECONOMICS
FINLITI DELIVERS PERSONALIZED FINANCIAL
INSIGHTS USING THE POWER OF PSYCHOMETRICS
OVERALL WINNER:
AGRYO
PEOPLE‘S CHOICE
WINNER COPIA
FFCON21 PITCHING
FINALISTS
2020-21 FINTECH
DRAFT PICKS

iv

FEATURED
We are living through a
period of rapid change,
possibly beyond society’s
capacity to keep up. The
metaverse has taken over
tech headlines. There’s an
unprecedented acceleration
and convergence of
technology. It’s rampant
and widespread.
Various emerging technologies, such as
artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR),
virtual reality (VR), and 5G, along with dozens of
devices that work together (Internet of Things),
have helped to create an environment in which
new inventions, possibilities, and learning
curves change weekly.
According to Peter Diamandis and Steven
Kotler, authors of The Future Is Faster Than
You Think, “Moore’s Law is the reason the
smartphone in your pocket is a thousand
times smaller, a thousand times cheaper,
and a million times more powerful than a
supercomputer from the 1970s. In 2023 the
average thousand-dollar laptop will have the
same computing power as a human brain
(roughly 1016 cycles per second). Twentyfive
years after that, that same average
laptop will have the power of all the human
brains currently on Earth.” That’s rampant,
exponential acceleration.
Rampant Acceleration
In the past, there was a slow evolution of
technology, which gave people time to
adapt. In the decade to come, it will feel
more like the Cambrian Explosion—an
event over 500 million years ago when most
living things burst into being. For instance,
radio preceded the advent of the television
by decades, which trained people to go
to a device for news and entertainment.
Mainstream cell phones predated the
smartphone’s popularity by thirty years and
slowly changed how we interact and work.
The Internet was prevalent for ten years
before mobile apps were popularized and
changed how we consumed and processed
information. These gradual changes, one on
1

top of the other, made for a smooth transition
from a typical household living in the 1950s
to a family living in the 2000s. How many
people today use a smartphone, laptop,
ebook, and tablet multiple times a day? This
would’ve been unthinkable in 1950. But the
change was gradual and maneuverable.
Make no mistake—technology is evolving,
as is our relationship with it. In the first phase
of the Internet, we connected information. A
person could search the web using a search
engine, send a document via email, and use
all this new information in novel ways. The
second phase of the Internet-connected
people. Facebook and Twitter created a social
media revolution, conceivably connecting
one person with millions of other people in
ways that were unthinkable in the past (e.g.,
think of a president’s or movie star’s Twitter
feed). And in the third phase (which we’re
entering), the Internet is connecting people,
places, and things in a more dynamic and
amplified way.
The Internet of Things is amplifying the
concept of location and the concept of
merging our digital and physical lives. It’s
gradually impacting more of how we live,
work, and play. A union of digital and physical
realities, already seamlessly affecting many
areas of our lives. From an acceleration
technology standpoint, we’re seeing an even
greater change than what we’ve seen in the
past—and at a faster pace. The combined rate
and scale of change is causing exponential
acceleration.
In the next decade,
we’ll experience more
progress than in the
past 100 years.
Diamandis and Kotler, again in The Future Is
Faster than You Think, wrote,
They explain: “We’ve been living through
a time of constantly accelerating
technological capabilities. We’re living in a
world of increasing, exponentially growing
computational power. Technology is always
on, always available, and we’re now moving
into the quantum computing era—these
exponential technologies are enabling
artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing,
synthetic biology, augmented reality,
blockchain and allowing these technologies
to converge, creating new business models.
It’s the convergence of these technologies
that creates waves on top of waves of
capability, which will change our world—every
industry—our economy, our government, our
health, our families. Everything is beginning
to change.”
If you think that is a great deal to consider,
Diamandis and Kotler also predict that metaintelligence
(i.e., when humans merge with
technology), will take place in less than
twenty years. We will be able to connect our
brains with the Cloud. The accumulation of
AI, AR, 5G, and IoT, plus related technologies
such as crypto/blockchain and extended
reality (XR) may have snuck up on us, but we
can adapt and catch up.
Business Disruption
Businesses are constantly on the lookout for
things that decrease time, cost, and increase
value. That’s why businesses are one of the
main drivers of technology. Manufacturers
equip operators with augmented reality
devices. Instead of reading a paper manual
or asking another person for help, AR glasses
teach operators where to go for parts or how
to fix equipment. Connected sensors on
hardhats monitor workers’ location and notify
them of dangers or other equipment.
In the restaurant industry, line cooks work
alongside robot arms equipped with different
appendages like hamburger flippers or deep
fry baskets. Even marketing teams have to
evolve as they work with digital influencers
(CGI people who pose with sponsored
clothing or gear).
We’re used to working side-by-side with
devices that we believe are safe, and doing
that saves us time. For instance, many
families have a robotic vacuum cleaner, and
they don’t think twice about it. Warehouses
use robots to fetch and store packages. Tye
Brady, Amazon Robotics’ chief technologist,
said, “The efficiencies we gain from our
2

associates and robotics working together
harmoniously—what I like to call a symphony
of humans and machines working together—
allows us to pass along a lower cost to our
customer.” As these “cobots” (robot coworkers
or collaborative robots) become
prevalent, it’s likely that our interaction in the
home with Alexa, Siri, or Roomba, will have
conditioned us to be accepting of our new
digital co-workers.
Talking points, instead of planned slides,
allow the audience to more easily move
from topic to topic based on their interest.
VR provides subject material on an asneeded
basis instead of going from slide to
slide. Immersive environments like virtual
and augmented reality and holographic
telepresence make more sense than ever.
Virtual reality is data-rich, providing a whole
new level to the conference experience.
Conferences are disrupted
by virtual reality. In 2018,
Cathy spoke at Lethbridge
College’s Merging Realities,
the first conference hosted
in virtual reality. Over three
hundred people registered
for the event. People
outfitted their avatars in
business attire.
At the time of this writing, companies are
getting rid of their corporate headquarters,
opting to stay remote even after the
pandemic subsides. Kara Swisher stated that
Zoom’s shares rose 60 percent in the month
of February 2020 as employees embarked
on a litany of Zoom meetings from home.
One managing director at Accenture asked
her team to buy Oculus Quests headsets so
they could meet virtually for daily tasks. In
the past she had only used VR for specific
training modules or client needs but after
a few weeks using VR with her team
she noticed “group energy and sense of
camaraderie are better than with any other
mode of communication.”
FEATURED
Virtual reality reduces costs to participants
since hosts do not have to rent out large
convention centers. It also opens the doors
to even more participants since people aren’t
held back by physical constraints. Vendors
create 3D booths to upload into the lobby.
“Instead of handing out pens and candy, they
can give away free credits to their product
or services, something that would actually
be more beneficial since it brings potential
customers right to their website instead of
a pen they’ll forget in a desk drawer,” said
Lily Snyder, digital technologist. “Vendors
who pay a premium can have a whole virtual
experience of their product or service in
action for participants to take part in.”
Since then virtual reality conferences like
Enablers of Tomorrow, Women in XR Venture
Fund Pitch Showcase, and Educators in VR
Summit are all examples of VR disrupting
business. Public speakers better engage
with audiences in “nonlinear conversations.”
3

A training manager at Nestle Purina thinks
using VR will “help the company recruit a
more technically fluent workforce in the
future.” Nestle Purina uses virtual reality to
build out shelf ideas and category concepts.
VR lowers the risk for employees who build
live tests. It also accelerates time to market
because of the shared vision customers and
employees virtually walk through together.
“Instead of showing them PowerPoint after
PowerPoint or showing them a demo that
might not be to scale, we’re able to use the
virtual reality technology in ways that offer
customized solutions and allow us to make
changes over and over and over again,” said
Kenny Endermuhle, Senior Manager of Retail
Innovation Strategy at Nestlé Purina.
Months into the 2020 coronavirus pandemic,
a local chapter of the Construction Financial
Management Association conducted their
monthly meeting in virtual reality. The virtual
reality boardroom was what the chapter
needed after burnout from “zoom fatigue.”
Experiencing the immersion of virtual reality
once inspired construction firms in the
meeting to investigate other opportunities for
augmented and mixed reality.
The companies that can provide tools to
work from home are the ones experiencing
growth and profits. Yet, even with this data,
some companies decided not to hold virtual
conferences. In early and mid-2020, they
canceled or postponed previously scheduled
(physical) conferences, even across techforward
industries like telecommunications,
entertainment, and social networking. Their
failure to adapt cost them business.
Social Disruption
The Internet and mobile technology changed
how we communicate as human beings.
Generation Z (a.k.a., the iGeneration) make
and break friendships on social media, never
confronting each other in real life. Families are
divided online by algorithms that feed them
one-sided articles, making Thanksgiving dinner
a battle of “Fake News.” The Internet, with its
promise of opening world views, now seems
to close them. From a social standpoint, the
convergence of technologies will continue to
change how we interact with family members,
friends, and co-workers. In under ten years,
people will be able to experience a volumetric
or holographic (3D visual) representation of a
friend or family member in front of them. They’ll
be able to have a conversation with someone
as if they were sitting in the same room, though
thousands of miles apart.
At Magic Leap, Cathy worked with an amazing
corporate team, including some of the most
advanced software developers specialized on
spatial computing, which Simon Greenwold
defines as “human interaction with a machine
in which the machine retains and manipulates
referents to real objects and spaces.” The dev
team created a mixed reality chessboard and
the ability to play against a live 3D opponent.
One chess player was on the first floor, and the
other was on the second floor. They saw each
other as holographic images and could see
each other’s moves as they played on the virtual
chessboard. Companies like Spatial, Rec Room,
AlcoveVR, VR chat, and Galaxity are among
the spatial computing companies altering the
way we work and play from a social standpoint.
These social VR apps change the way we
share experiences, how we share photos of
our vacations, and how we relate to people
because we’re interacting in a 3D space and
experiencing the same presence as in real life.
If given a choice, most students would likely
rather have a volumetric display of Abraham
Lincoln giving a speech than read about it or
watch a video representation of it. Holograms
have something 2D videos don’t: presence.
When people interact with a volumetric video,
they have the experience that they are there with
that person, and they experience emotion and
memory that comes from physical interaction.
4

Internet dating will change dramatically when
people do not have to guess whether a flat
picture represents the person accurately since
they will have a holographic display of the
person right in front of them that may be harder
to manipulate. Instead of having quarantinesafe
first dates on Skype, potential couples
can date via volumetric video. Someone who
may come across as boring or distant on video
can be themselves by moving around as a
hologram. And if the date isn’t working out?
Simply shut off the stream. Maybe someone
tested positive for an asymptomatic version of
a virus. They want to go dancing but don’t want
to get anyone sick. Dance clubs will enable
people to join the dance floor where they’ll be
a holographic presence for others to see and
to experience the club themselves using VR.
The possibilities are endless.
Golf and country clubs are already being
reimagined with virtual reality. Ready Player
Golf re-envisions a golf outing in virtual
reality. Friends join in VR to play a few holes.
Colleagues or business partners can join in
for a virtual game and talk business. Charities
like Doctors Without Borders have taken
advantage of the social aspect of VR in Ready
Player Golf. RPG generated $12,300 from 78
donors and sponsors.
to their Facebook profile. People can play
games, but more interestingly create worlds
that their friends can explore. Here lies the
possibility for monetizing digital goods within
Facebook, making virtual living a profitable
one. Facebook Horizon is monitored by real
Facebook employees (represented as avatars)
to avoid some of the social pitfalls that can
effect people in VR.
While Facebook essentially requires you to
be “you” in VR, other virtual realities allow
more freedom where a boy might appear as
the wizard Gandalf, or an older woman may
appear as Iron Man. These virtual realities
are interesting because they allow people to
experience a completely different life. But,
anonymity is not without consequences. Social
VR is like the early days of the Internet. People
met in chat rooms and talked to strangers;
there were no online rules of etiquette. In
some social VR platforms, people “sensory
bomb” others who are new to VR, causing
them confusion without a chance to escape
or set boundaries. In the workforce, etiquette
and social harassment guidelines will need to
be put in place before deploying VR. People
will find significance and purpose in the virtual
world, which will change how they relate to
each other in the physical world.
FEATURED
We may be physical creatures, but we
now have digital personas as well. These
existences—online and offline, physical and
digital—are slowly merging. That doesn’t mean
that future generations will always represent
themselves as their physical persona in the
digital world. They can choose to be the color
purple, a dinosaur, or a superhero—or all
three! In the future, people will choose to be
whatever they want to be because they’re a lot
more fluid in their concept of identity. And that
will transcend even further in the future.
For instance, Facebook has created a social
VR world called Facebook Horizon, which it
describes as a “social experience where you
can explore, play, and create with others in VR.”
Cathy was an early beta tester of Facebook
Horizon. She was one of the first people to
livestream from inside Horizon and show the
world what it looks like. In Horizon people
are represented by avatars that look like
themselves as their Horizon avatar is linked
We anticipate seeing job ads in the future for
people who can work seamlessly between
digital and physical realities. We think this way
because job titles like “hologram stylist” exist
today. Hologram stylists work with people to
prepare them for volumetric video capture.
5

They pick clothes to wear and how a person’s
hair should best be worn so that it is fully
captured in 3D. Fashion brands like Gucci
are already turning to digital only clothing
and accessories. Virtual couture designers
make digital fashion first, in the form of filters
or 3D assets. As we depend on AI robots,
like Amazon Alexa or Siri, they will become
gatekeepers. Business-to-Robot-Consumer
(B2R2C) marketing managers will reach
customers through robots. No matter how we
communicate, we expect AR, VR, AI, and 5G to
have an impact.
Entertainment Disruption
Hollywood is shifting to more immersive
content—not just for viewers but also during
production. In 2016, director Jon Favreau
started experimenting with VR through a film
called Gnomes & Goblins. He took what he
learned and applied them to his remakes of
The Jungle Book and The Lion King.
Traditionally, for a blend of live-action and
animated films, the actors speak into a
microphone while standing up, remaining
stationary when recording their lines. Instead
of utilizing the traditional route, Favreau had
the performers act together in a live space so
that he could capture their movements and
their facial expressions. He then incorporated
that into the animation. Favreau also had
people act using VR so that they could see
themselves as a lion, hyena, or a warthog.
The crew joined them in VR too. This changed
how people performed because they were
able to see themselves as the animated
character and were able to interact in a
digital space. If you had to play a lion, would
you rather stand still at a microphone or see
yourself as a lion in VR? Peter Rubin from
Wired wrote:
The Lion King was filmed entirely in virtual
reality (well, save a single photographed shot).
All the locations you know from the original—
Pride Rock, the elephant graveyard, Rafiki’s
Ancient Tree—exist, but not as practical sets or
files confined to an animator’s computer. They
live inside a kind of filmmaking video game
as 360-degree virtual environments, full of
digitized animals, around which Favreau and
his crew could roam. Headsets on, filmmakers
had access to all the tools of the trade, just in
virtual form.
We believe this will lead to a transition from
storytelling, where we’re passive recipients
of information to “story-living,” where we’re
active participants in the story with agency—a
capacity to act independently. The ultimate
way to experience this will be in an artificial
reality like VR. Of course, this isn’t completely
new. There have been branching narrative
concepts in the past, blending “choose
your own adventure,” with certain digital
technologies. In approximately five years from
now, there will be another shift from “story
living” to “story doing” (similar to AR) where the
person is part of the story.
Think of a supercharged version of Pokémon
GO. The previously passive audience will
now be active, leading to improvements in
engagement and entertainment. The increased
use of interactive storytelling techniques will
blur the lines between mediums. Watching
a pitched medieval battle on TV? Pick up the
controller (or your VR headset!) and help turn
the tide. This transformative experience is
coming soon to a screen near you.
To get access to new content from my second
book, “The Augmented Workforce: How AR,
AI, and 5G Will Impact Every Dollar You Make”
with my co-author, John Buzzell, visit https://
www.theaugmentedworkforce.com/launch
About:
Cathy Hackl
Founder
Futures Intelligence Group
Cathy Hackl is a globally recognized tech futurist and
top business executive with deep experience working in
metaverse-related fields with companies like HTC VIVE, Magic
Leap, and Amazon Web Services. She’s the founder of the
Futures Intelligence Group where she advises Fortune 1000
and top luxury fashion brands on metaverse growth strategies,
NFTs, and how to extend their brands into virtual worlds. She’s
a sought-after consultant, speaker, and media personality.
Hackl was recently featured in 60 Minutes+, Bloomberg and
Cheddar’s coverage of the metaverse and is a contributor to
Forbes. She has written two books and is writing an anticipated
book on the business opportunities of the metaverse that
will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing. Hackl has been
dubbed the Godmother of the Metaverse and is one of the top
tech voices on LinkedIn.
6

FEATURED
You might not yet have heard of social tokens
or creator coins, but it’s very possible that you
heard the news of Lionel Messi changing
football clubs from Barcelona to Paris Saint-
Germain. Well, millions of dollars of his $40M
signing bonus were paid in $PSG tokens
issued by social token platform Socios. Those
tokens allow fans to interact with the team by
earning rewards, participating in select club
decisions, and accessing unique merchandise
and experiences.
But what are social tokens?
Social tokens allow brands, whether individuals
or organizations, to include their fans and
community in a dedicated tokenized economy
that facilitates:
- Direct monetization
- Community engagement and loyalty
- Governance
Social media platforms can take 5-30% of
content creators’ tips and payment tools like
Venmo charge 3% commission. However,
creator coin platforms like Rally are able to
charge 0% for direct digital payments to creators.
Amazing platforms like Patreon, Substack,
YouTube, Instagram, and Twitch have enabled
creators to build business models on top of their
communities and content, but in addition to
expensive commissions, there is always the risk
of de-platforming and censorship, potentially
eliminating a particular revenue stream entirely.
On the pure donation side, even Twitter and
Clubhouse are now offering in-app tipping.
While there exist great tools like Gumroad
for monetizing downloadable content and
products, content creators need more choices
for direct digital payments that are independent
of any specific content platform or merchant
account. Social tokens facilitate low to no-fee
fiat and crypto transactions between creators
and their communities.
The ability to hold a balance of a creator’s token
creates an opportunity for deeper engagement
and customer/fan loyalty. Platforms like Discord
and Clubhouse or tools like WordPress can
confirm a user’s token balance through APIs
and provide token-gated access to content,
events, and VIP discussion channels. Fans can
earn rewards by contributing to, supporting and
evangelizing the community.
If you have explored NFTs at all, this may
sound familiar, as the ability to bake in early/
VIP access to special content, merchandise,
online and offline events, and other benefits is
exactly the same with creator coins. The third
utility allows for token holders to participate
in the decision process around a brand or
organization. Maybe you want to pick the color
7

of the next PSG jersey or vote on which subject
a content creator should discuss in their next
video or podcast. You’ll be hearing a lot about
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
(DAOs) over the next year and the functionality
is the same here; token holders can actively
participate in the governance of an organization.
Social tokens can be:
- Individuals, like your favorite YouTuber,
podcast, or newsletter
- Brands, like a soccer team
- Communities, like an online forum or NGO,
or the social token platform itself, like Rally
or Socios (Chiliz).
Why I’m bullish on social tokens: 3 trends
You might be saying, fine, those are a few,
recent examples, but is there really huge
potential here? There are three signals that
suggest that tokenizing content creators’
communities could lead to a massive market.
The first is the existing centralized creator
economy growth over the past few years.
Hundreds of thousands of people now create
full-time incomes on YouTube, Instagram,
and Twitch. There are hundreds of journalists
and writers making thousands (even tens of
thousands) of dollars per month through small
subscription payments on Substack. Patreon
has 200,000 content creators monetizing
their communities. During home confinement,
practically every band you know used StageIt
to perform paid concerts from their sofas. All
of this runs through centralized platforms and
legacy payment systems. Fans have shown
that they are more than willing to financially
support their favorite content creators directly.
The second signal is the rapid growth of NFTs
and digital collectibles this past year. While
you may be a bit dubious on the potential
of pixelated digital art, people continue to
innovate around the kinds of content and perks
they are creating with non-fungible tokens.
Digital collectibles, however, are the evolution
of the billion dollar industries behind baseball
cards, Pokemon, and comic books. Three
year old fantasy football platform Sorare is
built on NFTs, has generated more than $100
million in revenue in 2021, and is rumored to
have recently raised over $500M at an almost
$4B valuation. You don’t have to understand
the blockchain or care about bitcoin to see
the future value in business models built on
digital collectibles.
And third, decentralized finance continues
to create new financial solutions that don’t
rely on historical financial infrastructure in the
areas of savings, loans, bonds, crowdfunding,
and insurance. Each month, more people
are discovering and getting comfortable
with crypto/blockchain services without
necessarily being “into” crypto.
Taken together, these three trends show
us a very near future where brands use a
mixture of centralized and decentralized
platforms and financial services to monetize
their communities. Still not sure? I already
mentioned Lionel Messi but Sorare has 180
officially licensed football clubs and just signed
La Liga. Social token-issuance platform Rally
just raised $50M and signed a deal with United
Talent Agency to begin tokenizing some of the
thousands of actors, musicians, and athletes
that UTA represents. Sotheby’s just auctioned
$24M worth of digital collectibles. The Vault
($WHALE) is a social currency fund of curated
digital art, blockchain gaming, and virtual real
estate, with a market cap of over $100M. The
future of finance is social and tokenized.
For my part, I use $ETHAN on Rally as a
payment service for advisory and speaking
services, media sponsorship, as well as
providing access to my networking events
when I’m at The Next Web, Web Summit,
Slush, CES, or SXSW, for example. If you’d like
to give it a try, check out the pinned tweet on
my Twitter for instructions on how to receive
$10 worth of $ETHAN for free.
Twitter: @EthanPierse | Rally.io: $ETHAN
About:
Ethan Pierse
Director
The CryptoAssets Institute
Director at The CryptoAssets Institute, evangelizing the
blockchain economy across Europe and Southeast Asia.
Director, Quantum Economics Financial Advisory. Founder of
Borderless Ventures focused on FrenchTech, CEE, and ASEAN
startups. Former Managing Partner, Nest Venture Capital.
Serial entrepreneur in digital and e-commerce in the US and
Western Europe. 20+ years digital marketing strategy advising
Coca-Cola, HP, BP, large banks, airlines and governments.
8

9
FEATURED

A year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic,
the global economy is looking cautiously
at recovery. According to the World Bank,
growth will be very uneven given surges of
virus variants, patchy vaccination rates, and
withdrawal of government support measures,
so global GDP in 2021 is still expected to be 3.2%
below pre-pandemic projections. To support
a more equitable and sustainable recovery,
it is imperative that our economic systems
recognize how they need to be underpinned by
“flourishing communities, strong and resilient
social institutions, thriving natural ecosystems
and a stable climate” as the Capitals Coalition
articulates. As a member of their supervisory
board, I truly believe that we must empower
organizations to understand that their success
and the success of the global economy more
broadly is fundamentally dependent on
natural, social, and human capital, in addition
to produced capital.
We must work to curb greenhouse gas
emissions in all the ways we produce goods
and services, whether it is how we impact, air
quality, energy management, water quality,
how we reduce waste streams and maximize
circular economies to minimize our ecological
footprint. We must ask ourselves how are we
valuing the rights of all people and nature, how
are balancing our need for privacy and need
for security, how are we making sustainable
goods and services accessible, affordable and
producible by all, not just some. It is time to
consider product passports that standardize
the ability to assess carbon footprint through
a products lifecycle to help customers make
buying choices that support planetary health.
It is also important to ensure labor practices
that favor employee health, safety, inclusion,
diversity and equity.
It is time to enable that our businesses, financial
institutions and governments include the value
of all forms of capital in their decision-making,
especially as countries face their commitments
to the Paris Climate Agreement and United
Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
And this is where there is huge potential to
leverage digital technologies and increasingly,
financial technology (fintech) to support
a capitals accounting approach and to
develop stronger ESG (environmental, social,
governance) metrics in support of more
sustainable investments.
For example, AgriLedger’s work in Haiti is very
inspiring. This agricultural-focused blockchain
systems provider is piloting a project to use
blockchain technology for traceability and
payment that will allow the farmer to maintain
ownership until the sale at final destination,
while all the packing and logistics services will
be provided by AgriLedger. This mechanism
scaled globally would give more power
10

and improved livelihoods to farmers while
minimizing waste streams as produce lifecycle
management ensures maximum contribution
to value chains as well as composting waste
to increase soil health. CarbonX, a Canadian
fintech-designed environmental software,
enables users to calculate the carbon impact
of their products and services and to offset
this through investments in carbon mitigation
projects carefully evaluated not only for
their environmental impact but also for their
social and economic impacts. Open Climate
is a collaborative project led by the Open
Earth Foundation, an non-profit organization
operating globally and based in the United
States. The project explores the potential
application of a range of digital technologies
to developing a transparent, global, integrated
climate accounting system and aims to codevelop
a decentralized ‘ledger of ledgers’ to
collect and share climate data from around the
world, balancing transparency and privacy.
Even with all these excellent examples, it is
critical that the tools and technology are not
developed in a black box. In order to have
mechanisms such as stronger ESG metrics
that can potentially transform investments
and truly increase accountability, it is critical to
first build trust. Trust in the metrics and trust in
the technologies underlying the development
of those metrics. By creating more inclusive,
collaborative approaches to probe the
assumptions underlying the algorithms used
to develop ESG metrics, trust and common
standards can be agreed upon.
Another barrier to overcome is the complexity
of the systems at play. There is a dichotomy
between technological literacy and education
to build technological capacity on the one
hand, and over-complexification of digital
systems on the other hand. More of an effort
must be made in order to de-complexify
technology to some extent. This will avoid
the development of what colleagues have
referred to as “technological expertocracy” –
or the continued development of a group of
elites who have access to and understanding
of the incredibly complex systems underlying
the digital infrastructure that increasingly
dictates our lives and is shaping fintech. A lack
of trust in digital technologies or in the experts
who develop and control them can create
huge barriers to implementation, scaling,
enabling policy frameworks and impact in
terms of addressing systemic challenges such
as climate change.
Related to this, there is a strong need to
develop more human-centric technologies
– including fintech. Engaging citizens more
directly could be a positive way forward here,
both to build trust and also to ensure that
technologies are addressing biases, reflecting
shared values, allowing more equity in access
and incentivizing collaboration as opposed to
increasing division.
And efforts are being made. For example,
our initiative, Sustainability in the Digital Age,
convenes leaders in business, government,
science, and civil society to explore how to
consciously steer the societal transformations
unfolding from the development and
deployment of new digital technologies,
towards equitable and sustainable paths.
Similarly, the Global Commons Alliance has
been inviting all stakeholders interested
in accounting and standard setting that
considers ESG, to come together and work
at shaping a co-creative space to align
everyone. The international Coalition for
Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES)
is an open multi-stakeholder community of
change makers and practitioners that seek to
collaborate in accelerating a digital planet for
sustainability.
So the momentum is here, and collaboration
is critical to unleashing the transformative
power of digital technologies in an inclusive
approach that values not just profit making
but also our collective contributions to natural,
social and human capital for planetary health.
About:
By Éliane Ubalijoro, PhD
Sustainability in the Digital Age,
Executive Director
Future Earth, Global Hub Director
(Canada)
Decades of experience span academia, science-policy and the
non-profit and international development sectors. Professor
of Practice for Public-Private Sector Partnerships at McGill
University’s Institute for the Study of International Development,
where her research interests focus on innovation, gender and
sustainable development for prosperity creation. Her teaching
over the last decade has focused on facilitating leadership
development.
FEATURED
11

Challenger Banks are the players that offer
digital-only alternatives to traditional financial
institutions’ banking products and services. As
per FGS database, there are 40 such players
in Canada, and we categorize them into the
following 4 categories based on the status of
their banking license. Top players under each
category include:
• Beta (using parent FI’s banking licence)
- EQ Bank, Simplli, Tangerine, Brightside
by ATB
• New (secured a new banking licence) -
PC Financial, Motusbank, Canadian Tire
Bank, Rogers Bank
• Neo (don’t have their own banking licence
but have a partner who does) - Neo
• Financial, Koho, STACK, Mogo
• Non (don’t have a traditional banking
license but meet the conditions to offer
financial products in non-traditional
ways, like getting a e-money license) -
Brim
Over the years, these players have seen
tremendous growth in their adoption through
launch of innovative value propositions for
Canadian consumers. Following are some of
the recent trends seen in space:
SME Challenger Banks finally enter the
picture
While challenger bank for small and medium
businesses was a white space for a very long
time in Canada, this year we have seen four
players enter the space - Carry, Float, Benji,
Jeeves. While most of these solutions are in
beta stage right now, they have amazing value
propositions for Canadian SMEs like no fee, no
personal guarantee corporate cards, unlimited
one-time use virtual cards, one-click accounting
sync and spend management. While these
are the solutions for small businesses, Moves
is a player that has recently launched Moves
Spending Account, a banking solution for gig
workers. Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have also
partnered with Payfare to offer instant payments
to their gig workers through a prepaid card. Apart
from these, there are expected launches of
SME banking solutions in Canada from Shopify
(Shopify Balance) and Quickbooks (Quickbooks
Cash), which are live south of the border.
Kids/Teen banking gaining traction in
Canada
In the past couple of years, we have seen a
new niche of challenger banks appear on the
12

Canadian landscape - Challenger Bank for
Kids/Teens. Treasure, Walo and Wingocard
are some of the players in this space. RBC
Ventures has also launched a kid banking
app called Mydoh. These solutions not only
enable parents to digitally give money to
their children, they also help them to track
children’s spending, set tasks that need to be
completed for earning allowance, and help
kids learn about savings. While most of these
apps are meant for kids and teens for earning
allowance from their parents, we have seen
a new player, SideKick, which is meant for
international students in Canada. SideKick
helps international students to receive money
from their family in different currencies and
enables spending in Canada through a
prepaid card.
Challenger Banks are enabling innovation
in the rewards and PFM space
Challengers are innovating the rewards
space which is no longer limited to the
traditional loyalty programs. The new players
are offering a range of reward options from
cashbacks that are immediately accessible
for spending to personalized discounts at a
curated list of
retailers. Mogo has given the rewards a
completely different twist by offering a
cashback in bitcoins. For every purchase
through a Mogo account, you earn 1-2%
bitcoin cashback which is accessible through
Mogo’s bitcoin account (Mogo also has a
bitcoin investing product). STACK has created
a community called World Stream where
STACK users can share their purchases and
STACKHacks to earn best rewards and save
money. PC Financial, on the other hand, is
staying strong on its loyalty program game
through its PC Optimum points program. The
program has more than 18 million members
and is in fact the layer behind most of the
Loblaw offerings - PC Money, Credit Cards,
PC Health and beyond.
solutions. These use-cases will further grow
with the advent of Open Banking in Canada
as users would then be able to link all their
accounts to a single app and get a full view
of their financial standing which will enable
informed financial decisions.
Prepaid is enabling non-banks to enter
challenger banking space
Non-banks are entering the financial space
through the launch of ‘bank like’ solutions
which are mainly enabled by a prepaid card.
The categories of these non-bank players
launching challenger banking solutions
for their customers range from tech giants
to e-commerce players to major retailers.
Prepaid enables these players to quickly
enter the financial industry and start capturing
the banking relationship of their customers
with minimal regulatory requirements and
skipping the need for getting a bank license.
The non-bank players are thus able to not
just offer an end-to-end experience to their
customers but also capture their spending
data which helps them to learn more about
the consumer and further innovate to offer
predictive services.
FGS tracks FinTechs players operating in
Canada and as per our data, there are 40
challenger banks in Canada as of August
2021 and the number is constantly growing.
If you are interested in more Canadian
FinTech trends and insights, reach out to us
at sbritton@fintechgrowthsyndicate.com and
sbhatti@fintechgrowthsyndicate.com.
Surinderjit Kaur Bhatti
Co-CEO
FGS
FEATURED
Additionally, challenger banks are enabling
Canadians to better manage their finances
by offering tools like automated savings,
spending limits, sub-accounts for saving
goals, transaction round-up savings and
spending insights. Some of the players also
offer credit score monitoring and building
About:
Surinderjit is a FinTech expert with experience ranging from the
venture capital world to leading an innovation lab of a financial
institution to innovation consulting. At present, she is a leader
at FinTech Growth Syndicate and helping Canadian Financial
Institutions build their FinTech strategies through market
intelligence services.
13

A multi trillion dollar universe of illiquid,
privately held assets stands ready to be
securitized on the blockchain. Millions in
venture capital is riding on the premise.
So why haven’t security tokens caught on
yet?
The difference between Utility & Security
Tokens
Utility tokens are like chips in a casino. They
can be used as currency within the casino
for playing games, tipping dealers and
sometimes buying drinks or hotel rooms.
Holders of a casino’s chips do not own a
stake in the casino, nor does it entitle the
holder to any of the house’s winnings or
profits. Security tokens, on the other hand,
are like owning stock in the casino, shares
in the company itself. When the house
wins, you win. Security token holders own
something that might pay off through profits
or distributions. Utility tokens are used in
an ecosystem. Security tokens give you
ownership in that ecosystem.
In 2018, when many notable utility tokens
nosedived in value, the crypto community
rallied around security tokens and declared
that their simplicity would be the salvation
of the crypto economy. Some were even
saying that security tokens would become
crypto’s “killer app.” Venture capital poured
into security token projects, lured by the
prospect of bringing liquidity to private
markets, especially real estate, which is the
world’s largest asset class--and one where
brilliant minds have struggled to bring true
liquidity for decades.
That year, Founders Fund and Andreesen
Horowitz led an unusually large ($28MM!)
seed round into Harbor, a crypto startup
promising to put ownership of real-world
assets on the blockchain. The company’s
founder declared that Harbor would do
to the real estate market what email did
to snail mail. Three years later, the real
estate market has escaped any noticeable
change.
Harbor’s slow attempt to mainstream
security tokens is indicative of what has
happened across the entire security token
industry: big promises, disappointing
results. It’s easy to see why people might
(wrongfully) conclude that security tokens
are a bust.
14

Why have security tokens been so slow to
catch on?
In order for security tokens to achieve their
full potential, they must fulfill their promise
of liquidity. Liquidity requires two things: a
regulated exchange and sufficient trading
volume. So far, neither of these requirements
has materialized.
Security tokens are subject to greater
regulatory scrutiny than utility tokens (like
Bitcoin or Ethereum) from the US Securities
& Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Security
tokens require full SEC approval to be sold in
public offerings to non-accredited investors
or traded on secondary exchanges. This is
one of the many reasons their growth and
adoption has been more modest.
Most attempted security token exchanges
have floundered. In 2018, well-funded
companies like Templum, tZero, Coinbase,
Openfinance and Sharespost announced
that they would list security tokens on their
exchanges. Sharespost was particularly well
positioned to do so because they were an
existing broker dealer with ATS registration.
Three years later, the only exchange which
has succeeded even modestly is tZero.
However, even tZero, a passion project of
publicly-traded firm Overstock.com, only
offers two security tokens for public trading,
one of which is an affiliate of its parent
company. Openfinance, although still in
existence, offers securities with a combined
market cap of only around $50 million–a
mere drop in the bucket.
At the moment, no dominant platform for
trading security tokens exists. Furthermore,
the complex compliance issues have
largely discouraged new entrants. But
there is hope. Since security tokens are
programmable, compliance can be baked
right into the token which should reduce
compliance hassles. Compliant protocols
like Polymath and Harbor have figured
out how to collaborate with exchanges to
address these issues.
The SEC (once considered
an insurmountable obstacle
to compliant token offerings)
is finally starting to qualify
offerings. Nothing pours fuel
on a financial product’s fire
quite like transparency and
regulatory clarity, and it’s
happening now.
In July 2019, the SEC qualified the first
Regulation A token offering (a $23MM offering
for Blockstack) setting precedent for the
sale of tokens that are immediately tradable
to both accredited and non-accredited
investors. They also provided clarity around
secondary sales.
In July 2020, Arca Labs began trading its digital
security token, the ArCoin, which is registered
with the SEC and represents shares in Arca’s
U.S. Treasury Fund.
FEATURED
Trading volume has also been thin, but the
expectation that digital securities would
trade with the volume and frequency of
public equities or cryptocurrencies was
flawed from the start. Digital securities
represent private investments, an asset
class that has always traded infrequently.
Adding blockchain does not necessarily
incentivize owners to trade them any more
frequently.
Exchanges don’t exist and trading volume is
thin. Where is the silver lining in all of this?
In September 2020, the SEC finally registered
an $85 million security token offering from
INX, a foreign crypto trading company.
This became the first ever security token
IPO qualified by the SEC, marking a major
milestone.
In April 2021, the SEC qualified a Reg A+
token offering for Exodus, marking the first
digital asset security which conferred equity
in a US-based issuing company. Exodus
subsequently raised $75 million from 6,800
individual investors.
15

Security tokens aren’t strictly
a US phenomenon. In May
2021, a Singapore-based
bank issued its first security
token offering, a $11.3MM
digital bond that pays a 0.6%
annual coupon.
These movements may appear relatively
small, but they mark an important transition
for the crypto industry, as it evolves from
the Wild West of the dark web to navigating
the daunting obstacle course of regulatory
scrutiny. All of these changes pave the way
for massive mainstream adoption.
Given all of these positive developments, I
have become very bullish on security tokens,
but let me be very clear: my enthusiasm has
absolutely nothing to do with fractionalization
or liquidity. Both of those things are already
widely available in the stock market.
Tokenization adds very little on either of these
fronts.
Instead, let’s be brutally honest about what
people love about crypto. (Hint: it’s not their
stability or their SEC compliance.) Crypto’s
popularity is entirely attributable to its insane
volatility--so volatile that 20%+ intraday
swings are not atypical. Previous attempts to
tokenize stable, income-generating assets
have failed to acknowledge this fundamental
truth. If the carrot of fractionalization alone
were seductive enough to encourage people
to invest, then REITs would be as popular as
Shiba Inu coin. But they’re not.
The problem with early security tokens like
Aspen Coin or the RealT coins is that they
seem like they make sense but they offer
absolutely zero potential for the kinds of
meteoric returns that Dogecoin fans love.
Security token advocates point to the stability
of underlying assets as an important attribute
and one that should breed a strong affinity. But
stability contradicts the very ethos of crypto. If
security tokens are ever going to induce fullfledged
crypto mania, it will be because their
issuers finally embrace their volatility rather
than try to avoid it.
The perfect security token is one that is
secured by real assets--but where the
underlying assets themselves offer the
potential payout for a moonshot return.
I believe that security token alchemy will
occur when an insightful issuer finally creates
a SEC-qualified digital security token that has
potential moonshot returns. Why?
Combining the legitimacy of SEC qualification
with the rocket fuel of crypto-style returns
would be like the gateway drug for all the
crypto-curious conservative investors who
have dabbled in Bitcoin but are too timid to
invest in the types of highly speculative utility
tokens which might turn out to be completely
worthless. A truly compliant crypto asset
backed by actual, quantifiable and verifiable
assets with the potential for exceedingly high
returns would break the internet--and maybe
Coinbase, too.
For investors attracted to the high returns but
deterred by an investment backed by nothing
more than a white paper and a promise of
future utility, the allure of such a security
token would be irresistible.
About:
Janine Yorio
Managing Director
Republic.co
Republic Realm is a metaverse innovation and investment
platform and among the largest owners of digital real estate
NFTs in Decentraland, Sandbox and Axie Infinity and among the
most active developers of in-metaverse content in Sandbox
and Decentraland. Republic Realm is the creator of the Fantasy
Islands master-planned community NFT project. Republic
Realm is backed by strategic financial and crypto investors
and Galaxy Interactive. Republic Realm is based in New York
City, and is an affiliate of Republic.co, the alternative investment
platform. For more information, visit www.republicrealm.com.
16

17
FEATURED

As the world emerges from a year or more
of uncertainty to find it’s new normal, the
aftershocks of the pandemic will leave
some indelible marks particularly on the
payments industry. Consumers that were
forced to shop online triggered warpspeed
developments in the eCommerce
space, as merchants (big and small) jostled
to convert shopping carts. Add to this
a growing popular sentiment to protect
personal wealth, the current evolution of
the payments space seems almost obvious.
As a long-time payments and blockchain
entrepreneur, I believe that we have reached
a watershed moment in the adoption of
digital currencies, with new data proving
that cryptocurrencies are increasingly part
of our everyday transactions.
Crypto finally breaks into the mainstream
With large corporations, banks, governments,
and retail investors alike holding crypto
assets, digital money as an effective
investment vehicle has been a reality on
Wall Street – and in the public psyche – for
a while. But, only recently are we seeing
the real tipping point for mass adoption of
crypto into the everyday lives of consumers,
as it moves from purely an investment
vehicle into the realm of value exchange. To
everyday shoppers, crypto has now become
a viable alternative to fiat currencies.
Triggered by changing buying behaviours
and escalated by pandemic-fuelled digital
innovation, I believe this evolutionary
tipping point in crypto adoption has been
realized because people have the choice
to pay with a wide array of cryptocurrencies
and have the desire to exercise this choice.
That’s why we’re seeing more merchants
partnering with payments experts to enable
crypto payments for customers, and this
is empowering them to spend gains on
real-world goods. From vacations and cars
to professional services and groceries,
consumers are being given the choice to
step outside the more traditional payment
methods, and this trend doesn’t seem to be
losing steam, especially as more merchants
jump on board.
Consumers also have much to benefit
from the greater transparency and control
afforded by blockchain-enabled payments.
Merchants also benefit from embracing
crypto, avoiding higher fees associated with
credit card payments (especially for crossborder
transactions), and by gaining access
to an entirely new, tech-savvy customer
base. The immutability of the blockchain
also helps merchants circumnavigate the
rising challenge of so-called friendly fraud
claims, as it eliminates chargebacks. Put
simply, accepting crypto payments can
help businesses of all sizes break down
barriers to entry when it comes to securing
profitable sales.
Our crypto data tells a compelling story
At CoinPayments.net, we are seeing a rise
of crypto payments across industries, even
18

with our eCommerce merchants. According
to our data for the first half of 2021, overall
merchant transaction volumes exploded
by more than 200% to almost $3 billion
year-on-year. Diving deeper into industry
indicators, you can see rising consumer
confidence in crypto payments as they
are willing to spend more per purchase,
with transaction sizes growing to $300 on
average. In the last year, CoinPaymants has
seen 10X transaction volume growth for
Shopify merchants alone. These numbers
would have been unheard of just three
years ago as widespread adoption was in
its infancy, and offer clear proof that people
are using crypto for everyday transactions.
Regulation is the crypto final frontier
Despite the change being evident, it’s worth
noting that this is not, by any means, universal
yet. CoinPayments.net data also shows that
some geographic regions are streaks ahead
when it comes to mainstream adoption.
Europe, for example, has a much more
established crypto community, with higher
levels of acceptance among businesses and
readiness among consumers. Conversely,
North America is only just getting off the
blocks and has massive growth potential.
the defining core of decentralization, but
I strongly believe that regulation is the
key to truly unlocking digital money for
the masses. And, further, it is exactly this
divide in opinion among industry players
that is preventing us from achieving greater
adoption through collaboration. By lacking
transparency in our practices, it is us -
industry leaders - who are going against
the nature of the blockchain and holding it
back. We are creating barriers to successful
mainstream adoption of crypto.
Questions from regulators will undoubtedly
make the industry ask questions of itself;
which is only a positive thing as more
conversation leads to greater education,
awareness and, in turn, greater adoption.
If industry leaders like CoinPayments can
collaborate to help design the best path
forward, the crypto industry can gain the
credibility required to earn the trust of the
consumers and businesses we are trying to
reach; those that so evidently are ready to
use digital money to exchange value.
Jason Butcher
CEO
CoinPayments
INSIDER VIEW
Why is Europe so ahead,
you ask? To put it simply:
regulation. In May, I
participated in the FFCON21
panel entitled “Mainstream
Adoption of Digital
Currencies and Investing in
Alternative Assets,” where
I said that clear regulatory
controls are required to
maximize crypto adoption.
About:
Jason is the CEO of the CoinPayments.net, the founder
of HODLtech.eu, Parallel Payments, Clear Payments, and
a board member and advisor for a number of payments,
fintech businesses and associations such the Emerging
Payments Association, the National Crowdfunding and Fintech
Association (NCFA Canada) and many others. He is passionate
about applying his entrepreneurial spirit to help digitalize the
world of finance and payment processing. Driven to make the
world a better place, his mission is to bring trailblazers and
innovative businesses together across all disciplines.
Some might argue that the notion of
governance for the blockchain goes against
19

Overrated or underrated?
It’s a question Tyler Cowen, one of my
favourite public intellectuals, poses to
guests on his podcast. The question turns
simple conversation into meta-conversation.
It moves you from discussing something to
discussing the discussion of something. The
question is almost magical, like a spell that
makes you disappear only to reappear on a
new cognitive plane.
So let’s pop the question: is the fintech
policy agenda overrated or underrated?
The answer depends on who’s asking.
Currently, the federal government is
reviewing Canada’s approach to financial
sector policy to put fintechs on a level
playing with banks. Open banking is
supposed to let fintechs access Canadians’
financial information, giving fintechs the
means to offer better products and services.
The government is also exploring whether
to give fintechs access to the payments
infrastructure our economy runs on — a
privilege exclusively afforded to financial
institutions, such as banks. Let’s call these
two initiatives the fintech policy agenda.
If the median voter is asking whether the
agenda is overrated or underrated, then it’s
grossly underrated.
The median voter likely doesn’t even know
what the fintech agenda is. Is open banking
about keeping my bank branch open longer?
I make payments whenever I tap my card at
the point of sale, so what’s the problem? In
fact, the median voter likely doesn’t know
what a fintech is, let alone what problems
the fintech agenda is meant to solve and
how it would solve them.
But if a fintech advocate is asking? Then the
agenda is overrated.
It’s not that payments modernization and
open banking don’t belong on the fintech
policy agenda. They do, but they’re not the
only things that do.
For example, how future proofed is the
fintech policy policy agenda when payments
modernization and open banking are at
risk of having a short shelf life? Consider
DeFi, or decentralized finance, a contender
for crypto’s killer app. DeFi refers to the
distribution of financial services on the
20

lockchain. As Stephanie Choo, a partner
at Portage Ventures, recently wrote, DeFi
“has the potential to become for financial
services what the Internet has been for
media production and distribution.”
The promise of DeFi
comes from innovation in
governance. It erodes the
power that rent-seeking
intermediaries, such as
banks and legacy payment
networks, have long had,
while circumventing the
barrier to entry-laden
oversight that governments
have long had.
The risk of obsolescence DeFi brings to
payments modernization is easy to see.
An endangered intermediary, Payments
Canada is building a real-time payment
system called the real-time rail, while the
government consults on giving fintechs
access to it. Fintechs support both initiatives
— and for good reason — but DeFi could
obliterate the need for both if it matures into
something more ubiquitous. It’s no wonder
someone once told me that Canada is
building railroads while the world is building
airplanes.
The risk of obsolescence DeFi brings to
open banking is also easy to see.
Jon Stokes, who co-founded Ars Technica,
recently described the status quo of data
governance as a “decentralized network
of siloed (user data) tables connected by
access-controlled APIs.” Stokes thinks we
could see the de-siloing and aggregation
of user data on the blockchain. If open
banking promotes competition, then
blockchain-based data portability promotes
competition on steroids. If you think such
visions are speculative, you’re not alone.
No one knows what the future of financial
services has in store, just like no one knew
what the future of media distribution before
the Internet had in store.
It’s too early to tell which way DeFi will go,
which is why experimentation is so important.
But DeFi experimentation is going to be
tricky, as it’s prone to undermining itself.
The government’s response to DeFi has
so far been an ambiguous combination of
supportive and fearful — the latter state
being one from which little good has ever
come. For example, although the Ontario
Securities Commission is allowing for
some experimentation with crypto, the
experimentation is limited and controlled.
Moreover, the Bank of Canada announced
it’s exploring how it could issue its own
digital currency to crowd out the privatelyissued
competition, should it ever mature.
It’s not hard to see the risk that the
government extinguishes too many future
possibilities, killing DeFi before its potential
is even meaningfully tested. This is why
DeFi deserves more space on the fintech
policy agenda.
Then again, perhaps you’re a DeFi bear and
think DeFi deserves no more attention than
it’s getting.
INSIDER VIEW
Another intermediary-centric initiative, open
banking compels banks to open their dataloaded
vaults to financial-app developers.
What I said of payments modernization is
also true of open banking: fintechs support
open banking, and for good reason. But open
banking does little good in a world where
financial services have been disintermediated
and user data is on the blockchain.
If that’s you, then substitute for DeFi for
another idea you think is underrated. Maybe
your underrated idea is sandboxing under
the Bank Act, making it easier for fintechs
to become banks, or maybe it’s better
coordination and alignment between
the provincial regulators on modernizing
consumer protection and market conduct
regulation. Alternatively, maybe Canada’s
21

competition laws need to be reformed
and authorities better equipped to level
the playing field between incumbents and
challengers.
The point is, no matter what you pick, we get
to the same place: the fintech policy agenda
is overrated because it’s not inclusive of
what’s underrated.
If you’ve gotten this far, rest assured
that there’s a way to make the fintech
policy agenda appropriately rated — not
overrated, not underrated, and just right. In
fact, it ought to be obvious by now. Take a
cue from Tyler Cowen: gather your smartest
friends and play a few rounds of “overrated
versus underrated” with them.
About:
Alex Vronces
Executive Director
PayTechs of Canada
Alex Vronces is the Executive Director of PayTechs of Canada,
representing the diverse community of payment technology
companies operating in Canada. Using his payments and
policy knowledge and network, Alex leads the push for a more
competitive and innovative Canadian payments ecosystem.
Alex came to the association from Payments Canada, where
he provided thought leadership and strategic advice on
important public policy initiatives, including the review of
Canadian Payments Act, the introduction of a retail payments
oversight framework, and open banking. He also was pivotal
in modernizing access to Canada’s national retail payment
system, successfully broadening access to the ACSS by way of
a regulatory amendment.
OCTOBER 27-28, 2021
Congratulations to the 2021
Recipients of the CIX Top 20 Early &
CIX 10 Growth awards program
EAIGLE
Out of 492 submissions this
year, our 2021 CIX Selection
Committee rated these startups
as Canada’s most innovative
Join us on October 27-28 for
presentations from 65+ hot startups,
plus state-of-the-art virtual networking,
where you can see ‘who is in the room’
and join other delegates for video chats!
22
cixsummit.com/2021

We are all in the COVID sea, but each of us is on
different ships. Companies that rely on faceto-face
contact, such as accommodation and
food services, have been negatively impacted,
whereas online delivery has seen significant
growth. The CFIB Small business recovery
dashboard 1 shows that as of 19th August 2021,
76% of small businesses are fully open, with
47% fully staffed and 39% at normal sales.
The data doesn’t show the massive variation
within respondents, but it is fair to say, sales
for small businesses are, overall, way down.
Women have been disproportionately
affected by COVID
McKinsey has been sharing their weekly view
on the impact of COVID. Their analysis has
shown that although women make up 39% of
global employment, they have experienced
54% of overall job losses 2 . Women have been
disproportionately represented in industries
that have declined due to COVID. Much of
the job creation focus has been in maledominated
industries such as communication
and construction.
The National Angel Capital Organisation’s
(NACO) 2021 report on Angel Investing 3
highlighted the research in Crunchbase’s 2020
report. It found that 20% of global startups
were woman-founded, but women were less
likely to seek and receive financing than men
(32.6% vs. 38%). Businesses owned by men are
more likely to receive venture capital, angel
funding and other forms of leverage such as
trade credit and capital leasing. Concerningly,
Crunchbase 2020 data shows that the
proportion of dollars to women-only founding
teams declined, to 2.3%, compared to 2.8%
in 2019. Underrepresented organizations,
including Black and Indigenous founders,
also receive less capital.
The reduction in investment in women-only
businesses is worrying since women have
been disproportionately affected by COVID.
The negative impact for women in business
during this time has been exponential in
nature. It is a double whammy.
I recall speaking at the Global Crowdfunding
Conference in 2016 on the increased
success for women and underrepresented
organisations through crowdfunding. The
PWC data supported these findings a year
later, with 17% of male-led campaigns reaching
their finance target, compared with 22% of
female-led campaigns. Overall, campaigns
led by women were 32% more successful at
reaching their funding target than those led
by men, data seen across multiple sectors,
geographies and cultures. ESMT’s data in
2019, again, backed this up 4 .
24
1
https://www.smallbusinesseveryday.ca/dashboard/
2
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/covid-19-and-gender-equality-countering-theregressive-effects
3
https://digital.builtbyangels.com/link/741283/150/
4
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-women-successful-crowdfunding-men.html

If you are curious, the drivers for success
include the ability to tell stories that engage
potential investors and the ability to multitask,
as it is not one tool that leads to an
investment. These skills are often seen well
expressed in women.
COVID has changed business permanently
COVID has accelerated change. We’ve had
a lifetime of social change in less than two
years. COVID-driven change has opened up
opportunities, and if I can say the overused
phrase, the opportunity to pivot and create
businesses that meet people’s new needs. 92%
of small businesses have pivoted in at least
one way, but many have pivoted in multiple
ways. Only 8% did not pivot their business at
all to adapt to the current environment 5 .
The biggest challenge for small businesses has
been the lack of skills for the new approach.
Followed by a scarcity of funds to make the
changes needed to survive, thrive or grow 6 .
Crowdfunding’s role in raising capital in a
post COVID world
Crowdfunding can play a crucial role to
address the capital gap for businesses. We
need to raise awareness of crowdfunding in
companies looking to pivot and capitalise on
the new opportunities—investment in new
businesses and investment in women-led,
black, and indigenous founders.
• Transaction value is expected to show an
annual growth rate (CAGR 2021-2025) of
1.61% resulting in a projected total amount
of US$24.6m in Canada by 2025.
• Even though Canada is a relatively large
player in the alternative finance space, our
Southern neighbour, the US, still leads with
a projected $1.2b in total transaction value
in 2020. Even with our new harmonised
regulations, due in September, Canada’s
regulations lag behind the US, but that is a
separate article.
Our two most recent contracts are with visible
minorities, one is a women led and indigenous
business. Both are excellent businesses that
meet a need in the marketplace. Through
crowdfunding they will benefit from growing
their awareness and customer base.
Crowdfunding has also opened up access to
capital for both companies.
Governments have spent a significant amount
of money to sustain people and businesses
through the COVID crises. But it hasn’t been
enough to build new businesses and create
jobs to replace those lost. The taps will start
to be turned off soon. The capital available
through crowdfunding can be used to build
business and employ the most impacted. I
hope the provincial securities commissions
and the government will leverage the new
harmonised regulations to encourage new
companies and new investors.
INSIDER VIEW
Just as we discussed the different journeys
each of us has had in the COVID sea, we’ve also
seen different financial impacts. Households
in Canada have increased their net savings 7
due to government support and reduced
spending. At the same time, the comfort in
online financial transactions has increased.
Crowdfunding breaks the barriers so that all
Canadians, not just the wealthiest, can invest
in companies. This releases capital to invest in
businesses to help them pivot and capitalise
on the new opportunities.
About:
Victoria Bennett
NCFA ambassador and Principal
Bennett Milner Williams Consulting Ltd.
The capital available for crowdfunding was
already pretty buoyant. The transaction value
in the Canadian Crowdfunding segment is
projected to reach US$23.1m in 2021 8 .
Victoria Bennett, FCIM, BSc(Hons), is an NCFA ambassador
and Principal of the crowdfunding agency, Bennett Milner
Williams Consulting Ltd. She founded The Crowdfunding Hub
to provide broader access and support to organisations raising
capital through crowdfunding and is a passionate believer in
the democratisation of capital through crowdfunding.
5
https://smallbiztrends.com/2020/07/small-business-reinventing-during-pandemic.html
6
https://smallbiztrends.com/2020/07/small-business-reinventing-during-pandemic.html
7
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210301/dq210301b-eng.htm
8
https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/fintech/alternative-financing/crowdfunding/canada
25

Has your investment thesis changed precovid
versus now?
Covid has been a digital reality check for
financial institutions. The strongest companies
that have emerged post Covid are those
helping financial institutions accelerate their
digital transformation without being a victim
of long sales cycles. Our thesis has changed
little in that we believe in collaborating with
financial institutions and removing friction for
users to consume financial services.
What do you see as the long-term impact of
COVID-19 on the pace, shape and evolution
of the Canadian fintech ecosystem?
Many of the services provided by financial
institutions were done face to face or with a
wet signature. Due to Covid this is changing
and will last longer term. The other big
change is that a larger portion of talent
working in financial institutions will be able
to work remotely which will provide a larger
more skilled talent pool and savings.
What fintech verticals are you most excited
about over the next 5 years and why?
• We’re seeing big growth in digital
insurance (B2B and B2C) especially in life
and health and employee benefits.
• The gig economy is driving digital SMB
banking and this is a huge market.
• Security will continue to grow due to new
digital financial services that increase
possible risk.
• Online financial services means the need
for more data analytics and process
automation.
• As crypto continues its momentum, we
beleive there are significant opportunities
to further develop user-friendly DeFi
applications to address a broader user
base.
What advice would you give fintechs who
are looking for new ways to tap the global
market during this crisis?
I have some general comments then one
specific comment during covid.
1. Succeed in one big market before going
to another. Going into other markets
requires resources and teams that
understand the nuances of those other
markets including, user preferences,
regulation, and compliance.
2. Make sure to architect the solution so that
it is multilingual and multicurrency.
3. Ask yourself can my business scale in
other geographies if travel restrictions
continue?
26

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
One last thing. Covid may accelerate certain
businesses however it is important to
understand demand post covid to map out
the longer-term strategy.
About:
David Nault
Co-Founder & General Partner
Luge Capital
David has been building early stage technology companies
as an investor, founder or senior member of the executive
team for over 20 years. Prior to co-founding Luge Capital,
David was an investor with Inovia Capital, a leading North
American venture capital fund. Before becoming a VC, David
was president of Callio Technologies, an information security
compliance software provider, whose intellectual property was
acquired in 2009. Prior to running Callio, he managed business
development, partnerships and marketing at Pivotal Payments
(now Nuvei, TSX:NVEI). Nuvei, Canada’s most successful IPO,
now processes $34B in payment volume for over 80,000
merchants worldwide. https://luge.vc/
INSIDER VIEW
FINTOKEN
To learn more about FINToken,
visit token.finhaven.com
27

Canada’s innovation landscape is evolving like
never before. With Payments Modernization,
Open Banking, and the approval of Canada’s
first crypto-asset custodian, Canadian
regulators are also stepping up to the plate,
ensuring protection for consumers. This means
constant and rapid adjustment of regulatory
frameworks to ensure regulations reflect
the nuances that innovation brings, while
addressing customer demand for advanced
technology and simplified experiences
through leveraging digital options.
That can make it hard for startups and even
established organizations to keep up with the
changes, let alone ensure that they have the
right tools and resources to operationalize
complex legislative requirements.
When it comes to compliance for FinTech,
Security and Data protection often take
the lion’s share of focus and can eat up a
significant chunk of capital along the way.
For example, the average cost of SOC 2 Type
2 compliance, a precursor for the vendor
management process, ranges from $30-40K
– not including the costs to get there, which
can be well over $100K.
Emerging Retail Opportunities
The mainstream adoption of virtual assets in the
retail consumer space (e.g., cryptocurrencies,
NFT’s and the like), coupled with modernized
payment rails and consumer directed finance,
points to a likely increase of entrants into the
payments market – a historical “sweet spot”
offering for startups. Along with this comes an
increased focus on consumer protection while
trying to balance innovation and competition.
This is the driver for the new Retail Payments
Activities Act (RPAA), passed on June 29, 2021,
and continued updates to the Proceeds of
Crime (Anti-Money Laundering) and Terrorist
Financing Regulations (PCMLTFR).
What do I need to know?
The RPAA defines the nature of a Payment
Service Provider (PSP) and requires PSPs to
register with the Bank of Canada who will
administer and enforce the RPAA, including
financial penalties for violations.
A PSP is defined as “an individual or entity that
performs payment functions as a service or
business activity that is not incidental to another
service or business activity” and covers “any
retail payment activity that is performed by a
payment service provider that has a place of
business in Canada…(or) performed for an end
user in Canada by a payment service provider
that does not have a place of business in
Canada but directs retail payment activities at
individuals or entities that are in Canada.”
28

While there are some exceptions, this aligns
directly to the FINTRAC definition of a Money
Services Business (MSB) including services
dealing with virtual currencies. This evokes
the requirement to also register with FINTRAC
and directly connects a PSP to the obligations
outlined in the PCMLTFR for an MSB. It’s
important to note that the PCMLTFR already
accounts for Money Services Businesses
(MSB’s) and Virtual Asset Service Providers
(VASP’s) and has for several years.
players in the crypto space. An enforcement
action can have significant reputational risk,
something a startup may never recover from.
Fines in 2021 so far…
If you are unsure whether you fall under these
categories, please reach out to us and we’d
be happy to review the criteria together.
What are my obligations under the
PCMLTFR?
BEST PRACTICE
In short, MSB’s must set up a compliance
program that consists of knowing your
customer (KYC - verifying their identity)
and conducting a risk assessment of your
customer base to determine the level of due
diligence and ongoing monitoring required.
Risk assessments should be updated
regularly to and in accordance with detailed
FINTRAC guidance.
In addition to screening for Sanctions
compliance and Politically Exposed Persons
(PEP), there are multiple reporting requirements
depending on the types of transactions
conducted and in relation to customer risk.
There are also special requirements when
certain types of transactions are above a
specified monetary threshold.
Wow, that sounds like a lot. What’s this
going to cost?
It depends. Factors like customer risk, volume,
and velocity of transactions weigh into the
costs of establishing a compliance program.
...but making sure you get it right, protects
you from fines. FINTRAC actively enforces
penalties for violations, and if the US and
UK examples are any indicator, monetary
penalties are positioned to grow. Even a small
fine can cripple a smaller firm.
Trust is also a huge factor in influencing retail
adoption for new entrants, especially for newer
What can we do about it?
What we do know is that leveraging
established Regulatory as a Service tools
like MinervaAI can help you deliver on your
obligations and are proven to be much more
effective and efficient than traditional methods
alone.
Firms like MinervaAI are led by professionals
with deep knowledge of the regulations, the
investigations process, and the machine and
deep learning expertise to “plug and play”
into your existing technology and process
ecosystem. AI innovations coupled with
cloud scalability allows investigators to do in
minutes, what would traditionally take hours
and days to do.
Compliance doesn’t have to be scary or slow
down customer onboarding. In fact, having
an efficient and accurate risk assessment
process upfront, with automated ongoing
monitoring behind the scenes, ensures
that your customers will be able to transact
without interruption.
29

How can MinervaAI help?
Complete client risk assessment in real time, all in under a minute:
• Execute all your regulatory tasks; Sanctions and PEP scanning, adverse media analysis, social
media review, beneficial ownership, legal and disciplinary action, networks, and relationships
• Risk rate clients and contextualize that risk against multiple risk dimensions
• Monitor for change to customer profile and risk at configurable intervals
• Generate an auditable package to complete the investigation
Request a demo at minervaai.io
Jennifer Arnold
CEO and Co-Founder
MinervaAI. Chief Regulatory Nerd and
financial crimes enthusiast.
Charlene Sebastian
Head of Client Success and Delivery
Enablement
MinervaAI. Obsessed with Data and
getting *&^% done.
About:
MinervaAI is a venture-backed financial crime discovery
platform that uses deep learning and automation to radically
increase the efficiency, accuracy and efficacy of financial
crime investigations. It’s complete EDD in under 60 seconds!
MinervaAI requires no complex integrations and works
alongside your existing case management and/or transaction
monitoring solutions.
About:
Transformative enterprise leader focused on results; creates
strategic outcomes through value-based Agile execution.
Specializes in large, complex enterprise Regulatory initiatives
with a Data and Digital focus. Doing it well and doing it right
matters. Over 15 years’ experience leading successful programs
in Banking and Telecommunications. Collaborative influencer
who inspires trust in relationships to maximize team performance.
30

BEST PRACTICE
As the spotlight grows on Canada, one of
the world’s most cashless economies, tech
talent in the financial industry is in demand.
Home to some of the world’s most promising
fintech companies, Toronto is the secondlargest
financial hub in North America. From retail
banking to cybersecurity and cryptocurrency,
Ontario companies are booming. With
this comes competition for recruiting and
retaining top fintech talent.
In a remote world, Canadian fintech talent is
enticed to cross borders for competitive pay,
cool perks and unlimited vacation days. How
can these fintech companies continue to
compete?
The next generation of talent
Companies need to engage Millennials and
Generation Z tech talent. One way to do that
is to hire co-op students. By 2028, Millennials
31

and Gen Z will make up more than half (58 per
cent) of the workforce. Born between 1981 –
1996, Millennials are emerging leaders. Gen Z,
those born between 1996-2014, are entering
the workforce.
Here are ways you can attract and support
them:
1. Showcase your values
Values matter to Gen Z in the workplace. The
University of Waterloo’s Work-Learn Institute
(WxL) research shows that understanding
those values might be most important to
effectively recruit, motivate and retain young
employees. According to WxL’s research
almost half of Gen Z students are unlikely to
accept a full-time job if it matches their skills
but not their values.
Learn more: Click ‘Top Motivators’ image
2. Highlight diversity, equity and inclusion
The Canadian workforce will be 33 per
cent international by 2036. This global and
diverse workforce presents new opportunities.
To adapt, organizations must establish
a more diverse, inclusive and equitable
talent pipeline. Diversity strategies will
focus on blind recruitment, unconscious
bias training and looking beyond Canadian
experience requirements for credentials.
Companies must commit to diversity
targets.
4. Strengthen your remote
recruitment strategies
During the pandemic, organizations
shifted their operations to work remotely.
This challenged the way we do business
as well as recruitment and onboarding
strategies. A recent survey found that 73
per cent of workers hope remote work
will continue past the pandemic.
While Gen Z agree with this, our research
shows they feel stressed and struggle more
than their peers. This research found three
core themes as priorities for young talent:
• Socialization: help them to understand
workplace culture and build professional
networks.
• Productivity: give them flexibility and
independence to manage their work.
• Meaningful work: provide them
with challenging work that aligns with their
values.
Provide the right environment and
young fintech talent can blossom to fill
your talent pipeline. Don’t hesitate - get
them through your doors early as the
competition booms.
3. Focus on your job descriptions
Job descriptions that highlight how candidates
can learn, make an impact and link their academics
to their work, can enhance
job attractiveness for Gen Z talent. By
adding these, candidates can reframe how
they see themselves in the role – without
requiring organizations to change their own
values or offerings.
Want to increase your number of applications?
Check below to learn more and
download a job description sample:
About:
Tammy Kim-Newman
Business Developer
Co-operative and Experiential Education
University of Waterloo
Tammy Kim-Newman is a business developer and tech talent
specialist at the University of Waterloo, Canada’s #1 university for
Computer Science, Mathematics and Engineering (Maclean’s
2021 University Rankings). She has 10+ years supporting
industry partners with their early talent strategies and is an
advocate for work-integrated learning. If you have questions
about early tech talent recruitment strategies, please reach
out to Tammy Kim-Newman (tammy.kim-newman@uwaterloo.
ca) or 289-231-3752.
32

33
BEST PRACTICE

Businesses focused on fintech are hardwired
to fulfill customer needs, reduce customer pain
points, and introduce new ideas that shape a
better experience. Early stage startups may have
more flexibility to shape their brand, product, or
culture, but even larger organizations that are
looking to make a similar pivot are finding value
in making a change from the norm.
Startups are fast at testing and iterating. As
a product marketing consultant for fintech
startups, validating product-market fit is
essential for hypergrowth and sustainability.
Once achieved, it takes smart, customerfocused
decisions to drive ultimate success,
starting from product to brand, and from
customer service to culture. These mechanisms
also include rigorous reassessments to ensure
they’re adapting to a continuously evolving
landscape.
Successful financial businesses, regardless
if it’s a large organization or an early-stage
startup, adhere to these core elements.
Your customer wants to work with other
humans.
Humanize your business
It’s unfortunate, but for customers in modern
times, placing trust in businesses is at an alltime
low. Modern brands are focusing on
enabling human emotions within their business.
It reflects on virtually every aspect of their
public-facing self: ad headlines, PR, packaging,
content marketing, and “meet the team”
segments from the top down. Customers feel
greater trust when they can see the people
working behind the scenes.
One important takeaway: humanize the
brand, brand the human. Ultra successful
organizations brand their management team
as experts themselves. That may be why more
fans follow Elon Musk or Mike Novogratz on
Twitter over their respective company brand
accounts.
Your customer wants an easier life.
Get creative and simplify your customers’
lives
It’s no secret that AI tools, such as roboadvisors,
have taken market share from
traditional financial institutions. A product
should make the customer experience
simple without sacrificing time or money,
and at best, minimizes the customers’ need
to think. It begins by answering questions
for them. If your customers have a preferred
communication channel, make the necessary
changes to accommodate that.
34

In most cases, ideas that simplify your
customers’ lives may be deemed as too much
of a resource hog internally. However, a closed
mindset will inevitably lead to another company
stealing market share from you.
Your customer wants honesty.
Be more transparent than you’re traditionally
comfortable with From a customer POV,
offering greater transparency during financial
transactions has become a standard. Hidden
fees have always been a crux for customers.
Wise (formerly Transferwise) made the
smart move to not only offer lower fees for
currency conversion, but their transfer screen
also includes a detailed breakdown of where
each dollar is going (while simultaneously
showing how much they’re saving compared
to competitors like PayPal). It’s the little things
that count.
Your customer wants to be heard.
Create feedback loops for service-driven
opportunities
Better service is always a primary motivator for
retention. However service-driven initiatives
need to continually evolve to keep up with
customer expectations. Scrap initiatives that are
outdated.This can only be achieved by creating
a feedback loop in your customer lifecycle that
is repeatable and actionable.
Your customer wants to work with a winner.
Make education part of your content
strategy
Thought leadership is essential in building a
successful business. Budget planner Mint
revolutionized the industry by focusing on
delivering content that educated prospective
and current customers with the knowledge
needed to plan and meet their financial goals.
Your content team, which consist of content
creators and subject matter experts, need a
sound strategy that focuses on answering
customer questions - whether they’ve thought
it up first or not.
Your customer wants to work with good
companies.
Create a solid cultural foundation that
supports diversity and inclusion
Having an organizational structure and
strategy that supports diversity and inclusion
is imperative. Embedding D&I initiatives into a
company culture begins with recurring training
sessions and fostering open communication,
but it also means changes to hiring practices
from both management and non-management
roles. Organizations that support D&I in its
foundation unlock greater hiring capacities,
stronger customer onboarding and retention,
and a healthy work culture.
BEST PRACTICE
Lastly, take ownership when bad service is
apparent. Accountability and humility can go a
long way to not only those affected, but those
watching from the sidelines.
Your customer isn’t a number.
Continually refine your customer personas
Digging deeper into your customer personas
can help your product and marketing efforts.
While it’s easier to see your customer base
as defined by a few lines of text, defining
your audience into numerous segments and
increasing granularity will better define your
scope as a business. Never default to treating
your customers like a number. Focus on
developing better segmentation in your CRM
to optimize your customer funnels.
Financial organizations are continuing to finetune
their culture and product/marketing
strategy to reflect the changing directions
of their customer base. In order to succeed,
startups and large organizations in financial
services need to adopt a mindset that is
adaptive, open-minded, and forward thinking.
About:
Reggie Tan
Founder & Senior Growth Hacker
Rich Thinking
Reggie Tan is a senior growth hacker and marketing strategist,
with specialization in fintech, cryptocurrency, and blockchain
applications.
35

Picture this. You are the CEO
of a large financial services
company and are looking
to acquire a smaller fintech
company to expand your
business. Everything within
the company’s infrastructure
looks normal.
Turns out, technology and security of the
company wasn’t thoroughly tested, and
after acquiring the company, you inherit a
major security breach along with it, costing
you millions of dollars. Believe it or not, this
is exactly what happened to Paypal, when
it acquired TIO Networks and they are not
alone.
Paypal’s example proves the importance
of incorporating thorough technology due
diligence into the acquisition process of a
company.
What Does the Due Diligence Process
Entail?
To gauge what the due diligence process
entails, let’s consider the example of a
VC or a CEO of a fintech company who is
interested in preparing their company for
acquisition. After taking the first step to hire
an investment banker to show the company
to investors, there are three main stages of
the Due Diligence Process. The first round
of bids includes a high-level company
evaluation, addressing the condition of the
business, financials, and management team.
A handful of bids progress to the second
round of bids, which takes a deeper dive
into the business. The interested party then
submits a Letter of Intent (LOI) to indicate
interest in acquiring the company.
At the LOI stage, things could go awry
if issues are found while evaluating the
health of a company during the due
diligence process (including legal diligence,
accounting diligence, customer diligence,
and technology/cybersecurity due
diligence). After the LOI stage, if the investor
is still interested in the company, the deal
moves to the closing stage.
36

Why is Security Important in the Due
Diligence Process?
In any investment, buyers are clearly looking
for no problems with the company, as this
could cost them millions in the future.
A buyer’s priority is to minimize risks and
solve for sustainability and scalability through
assessing three aspects of the company:
people, process, and technology. Risks
surrounding people could involve code
development and knowledge distribution,
while risks around the process typically entail
sustainability and scalability.
Risks surrounding technology often
involve security issues and documentation
surrounding open-source code. If you think
your company will need to embark on the
due diligence process in the next 6-12
months, it’s crucial to be thorough with
documentation regarding all aspects of due
diligence.
To prove that a company
doesn’t have issues, it’s
important to provide the
correct documentation
and engage security
from the beginning of the
development process and
have it ready for the due
diligence process. Engaging
security from the start leads
to strong foundations in
governance and policy as
well as in the applications
themselves.
Regarding the technology and security
aspect of due diligence, it’s important to
note that doing a risk assessment shows
buyers that a company is truly worth the
investment. It’s also crucial to know where
your security issues lie by having a 3rd party
look at the code to find loopholes. It assesses
business impact and how likely a security
breach is to occur, making it more valuable
than security gaps or vulnerabilities.
If any security issues are found, it’s key to
have a plan of action for the investor or
show progress on the issues that were
found. Where open-source software is
used, keeping thorough documentation on
what is used will help tell the company’s
story while preventing it from being put on
the defensive.
Going forward, sellers should expect
more scrutiny for technology and security
aspects of the company. Therefore, any
preparation on this front would be valuable.
Buyers are also becoming more aware of
what breaches exist and will ask sellers how
they’ve prepared themselves. Buyers need
to be able to ensure these breaches aren’t
impacting them, as they don’t want to inherit
liabilities.
What Are the Next Steps?
In short, add security early in the
development process and document
your controls to cover your bases. Apply
security best practices while building your
company and applications. Though it may
seem more efficient in the short run, refrain
from cutting corners, and get professionals
to support you during the due diligence
process. Spending money on a 3rd party
assessment to find potential security
loopholes is valuable, as this could save
millions in transaction value. Remember,
investing in security initially to ensure
a strong security posture will only save
millions of dollars in the long-term.
BEST PRACTICE
Consistent and diligent documentation from
the start of the process also strengthens the
validity of the company’s security posture.
If you’re looking to learn more about what to
do to secure your company including your
products and infrastructure, check out the
Security 4 Startups (S4S) framework: https://
37

www.security4startups.com/. S4S was
designed by a group of investors and small,
mid, and large-corporation CISOs to help
startups combat their biggest security risks
in a balanced manner. If you’re looking for
an in-depth security consultation, Forward
Security and RiskAware are always here to
help, so get in touch: contactus@fwdsec.
com.
About:
Farshad Abasi
Founder, Chief Security Officer
Forward Security
At Forward Security we are all about doing application, cloud,
and information security better. Our team tackles security
using a systematic approach, leveraging standards based and
repeatable processes. We are incredibly passionate about
delivering the best security solutions, and are driven to help our
clients achieve the highest level of security to enable business
growth. https://forwardsecurity.com/
Michael Castro
Founder, Risk Executive
RiskAware
About:
RiskAware was incorporated in 2018 to help address the gap
with organizations utilizing part-time or fractional CISO and to
offer executive leadership services. We serve organizations
of all sizes and specialize in small and mid-size businesses
(SMBs) in all verticals, including Not-For-Profits and Startups.
https://riskaware.io/
38

39
TRENDING

How the current macro environment is
changing the way we work, play, and
engage online.
The last time you left home, you probably
had at least 3 items with you that would prove
who you are, most likely your mobile device,
wallet, and keyring.
In the “real” world, we’re used to carrying
personal identification, driving or taking public
transit, and our keyring not only provides
security to our homes, autos, offices, and
other valuables, but also tells a bit about our
personality, based on the type of keyrings, and
fobs we have. Why should it be any different
in the online world, and how can I prove who I
really am online just as easily?
While the pandemic has held a grip over our
daily lives, not until recently have we started
to believe that things may get back to normal.
This global crisis has also been a catalyst for
digital identity.
Not only did our traditional lives change
dramatically during this period, but so did our
digital existence. Online gaming and digital
content consumption went up 75% literally
overnight. Amazon is our new best friend
delivering almost daily. While it may have
seemed novel initially, it became the new
reality thanks to our kids being educated online
and trying to keep up with friends and family
via Zoom calls instead of getting together. It
has also has meant finding reliable ways to
stay in touch with our clients and business
associates and doing more online, exposing
ourselves potentially to additional security
concerns and identity fraud. Now, more than
ever, we need something that requires us to
prove who we are.
Digitally, we can be viewed
as the sum of all our online
“information” most or which has
been controlled by corporations
intent on mining your data for
their overall benefit. However,
continuing jurisdictional changes
in privacy rules and data
protection in many parts of the
world have started to shift the
power of data from corporations
to the people.
40

As we spend more of our lives online, it will be
essential to prove who we are when it comes
to:
• Reduction of potential identity fraud
• Validation of online purchases
• eSports, online gaming, and social media
• Information and data services
• Education
• Government and Healthcare services
New technologies and innovations are
changing the way digital identity and
personal information is managed. We’re
seeing healthcare passports, single sign on
applications and digital wallets, but the key is
for users to manage, control and benefit from
this information and personal responsibility.
With over 300 million people in North America
and over 5 billion people online globally, the
market, tasks and opportunities are both
enormous and daunting. Organizations
like the Linux Foundation, Trust over IP
Foundation, Cardea, The Lumedic Exchange,
Liquid Avatar Technologies and other leading
firms and organizations are working to help
empower users from around the globe to be
part of the digital identity revolution.
To find our more, please feel free to contact
us at www.liquidavatartechnologies.com
About:
David Lucatch
Co-Founder, President, Director & Chair
of Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc.
Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc., through its wholly owned
subsidiary KABN Systems North America Inc. focuses on the
verification, management and monetization of Self Sovereign
Identity, empowering users to control and benefit from the
use of their online identity. The Liquid Avatar Mobile App,
available in the Apple App Store and Google Play is a verified
Self Sovereign Identity platform that empowers users to create
high quality digital icons representing their online personas.
These icons allow users to manage and control their digital
identity and Verifiable Access and Identity Credentials, and
to use Liquid Avatars to share public and permission based
private data when they want and with whom they want.
TRENDING
Create, Secure & Share a fully customized digital version of you
Show the Digital World Who You Are TM
• Manage, control and benefit from your digital identity.
• High quality icons that represents you.
• Share what you want, when you want, and with whom you want.
• Access verifiable credentials in your digital wallet.
• Prove yourself digitally as easily & effectively as you do in the “real world”.
www.liquidavatartechnologies.com
CSE: LQID / OTC: LQAVF
Download today
41

Did you know, society generates 1.145 trillion
megabytes of data every single day? Most
of us don’t crunch numbers for a living, so
organizing data and displaying it intuitively
really matters. With all this data sprawling
the planet, one of the most significant
challenges is using it effectively.
Luckily, we can use artificial intelligence
and machine learning in our investment
portfolios to help us better understand
the data. Yet, this idea can still be very
overwhelming. Where do you start, and
what do you track and measure? How do
you know your data is working for you, and
how does your data compare to your peers?
The good news is that artificial intelligence
and machine learning work together with
big data, making it easier than ever to benefit
from the tech. One area this technology
can be applied is to our own investment
portfolios. After all, we’re all looking for a
more comprehensive understanding of our
strategies and wish we could make much
more confident decisions.
Artificial Intelligence and Better Data
Visualization Are Your Competitive Edge
People have been trying to understand and
exploit data for decades. From Bloomberg
Terminals to Robo-advisors in your pocket,
there’s been an explosion of financial
visualization tools for people of all skill and
knowledge levels. They allow just about
anyone to interpret signals and make
predictions based on their own perspective.
We can leverage those advances in
visualizations and add machine learning
algorithms to make the insights sharper
and more helpful.
Until recently, these algorithms were out
of reach for the average investor. This is
changing rapidly as today, developers build
platforms and services that make deep
learning accessible to everyone. There
are obvious use cases such as interactive
graphs or elegant charts. But from there,
it’s easy to imagine a world where your
portfolio is benchmarked against others in
a similar cohort, allowing you to fine-tune
your strategy.
42

Using the right wealth management
platform further allows wealth owners and
family offices with complex portfolios to
access these data visualizations and unlock
a complete picture of their overall wealth in
exciting new ways.
Use Case: Fundamental Analysis
AI-powered visualizations can help
investors gain perspective into what‘s going
on with each of their asset classes. Adding
algorithms to the mix can uncover hidden
correlations between those same asset
classes. From there, we can use this data
to suggest which investment opportunities
may outperform others and which positions
we might have to reconsider.
Another example would be using AI to
scan documents such as annual reports,
economic articles, and other financial
datasets to better understand a company‘s
fundamentals.
In other words, AI can lead to a more healthy
asset management strategy.
to assess the risk curve of a particular
investment. It can forecast risk variables
ensuring absolute risk falls within bearable
levels, whatever those might be.
Another great example is assisting with
transaction costs for large purchases. An
AI can find the best prices for breaking up
big trades into smaller chunks. These kinds
of algorithmic traders already exist and
use artificial intelligence (we just call them
Robo-advisors.)
Artificial Intelligence Improves
Accessibility to Data Visualization
These tools can supercharge your
visualizations. Wealth owners can capitalize
on the advancements and availability of
algorithms to find insights in the same way
financial analysts of the past did without the
need to manually calculate outcomes.
We‘re all looking for ways to improve our
portfolio management. It might be time to
ask ourselves if the AI and data visualizations
we use are up to the task.
TRENDING
Use Case: Stronger Portfolio
Understanding
Artificial intelligence can also help us
better predict future outcomes or expected
returns, which can help with optimal asset
weighting. This is like having a magical
crystal ball. We can understand what our
present-day portfolio looks like versus our
dream portfolio with a couple clicks. We
can run and re-run scenarios or ask the AI
to help us know what might happen to our
portfolio based on specific criteria.
Algorithms are also capable of handling
complex optimization problems. For
instance, they can restrict the number of
assets or set minimum holding thresholds.
When you couple these ideas with userfriendly
visualizations, things really start to
get interesting.
Use Case: Risk Management
AI can likewise help us analyze qualitative
data, like news reports or social media,
About:
Michael Sikorsky
CEO
Copia Wealth Studios
Michael Sikorsky (@mjsikorsky) is an EY Entrepreneur of the
Year Winner, Deloitte Fast 500 Recipient, and serial innovator
- he sold his first company to ThoughtWorks at age 28.
His current company, Copia Wealth Studios, is a financial
intelligence platform on a mission to Simplify wealth. He is also
the Chief Investment Officer of his family office, Sky and Ray.
Michael is passionate about education and has guest lectured
at Harvard Business School, Stanford, MIT, Columbia Business
School, and the World Economic Forum.
43

In a cooperative ecosystem,
companies interact with each
other based on a digital trust
infrastructure. The members
can network their services
and thus temporarily access
resources of competitors.
The bottom line is that
they can better meet the
customer needs. At the same
time, all players retain their
independence, their data
sovereignty and have the same
market opportunities.
Thomas Müller
evan.network
Decentralized peer-to-peer networks and
platform economics
Blockchain, Distributed Ledger Technologies
(DLT) as well as other decentralized
technologies, such as Decentralized Identifiers
(DID) provide technical mechanisms which
lend themselves very well to building fully
automated transaction platforms which can
manage financial transactions from contract
signing all the way to financial settlement
without the need for intermediaries. The
underlying peer-to-peer (P2P) principles,
in which all participants are equal peers
and operate identical nodes provide a
technical analogue to a “commons” technical
infrastructure which provides the transaction
execution layer to those wishing to conduct
decentralized commerce. Decentralized
platform economics are revolutionizing the
way services and delivered, consumed, and
settled.
Blockchain-powered cryptographic networks
(‘Cryptonetworks’) lend themselves very well
to peer-to-peer governance models in which
a common resource - the Cryptonetwork - is
community-governed. A major leap between
the world-wide web as we know it, is that
cryptonetworks have a secure and trusted
mechanism for incentivization and value
transfer known as ‘token-economics’. Token
payouts are calculated as part of the smart
contract layer and securely transferred as
part of the Blockchain’s essential function,
namely securing consensus. There is no need
44

for an intermediary to manage and enforce
terms and conditions, invoicing, payment and
settlement.
bloXmove: a decentralized platform for
Mobility as a Service (MaaS)
As an example of how this can be applied
to real-world applications, take the market
for urban mobility. The “product” or rather
“service” urban mobility offers, is neither this
car nor that scooter, but rather seamless
travel through a city – mobility as a service.
Users should be able to roam across services
delivered by different operators. This means
they only register their identity and credentials
once and these verified credentials serve to
unlock any service provided by any service
provider in the ecosystem – this being the
paradigm of “roaming”. By using decentralized
technologies such as Decentralized
Identifiers (DID) and Blockchain technologies
the complete service lifecycle can be
orchestrated, executed and settled through
a common decentralized infrastructure:
bloXmove.
TRENDING
Cryptonetworks are digital communities of
self-sovereign peers
According to the International Cooperative
Alliance a cooperative is:
“…an autonomous association of persons
united voluntarily to meet their common
economic, social, and cultural needs and
aspirations through a jointly owned and
democratically-controlled enterprise.”
Cooperatives have a long history. In their
formalized and legal form, they appear in the
19th century.
“These legal entities have a range of social
characteristics. Membership is open, meaning
that anyone who satisfies certain nondiscriminatory
conditions may join. Economic
benefits are distributed proportionally to
each member’s level of participation in the
cooperative…(Wikipedia)”.
Prominent examples of cooperative business
networks are:
• VISA, the well-known ubiquitous credit
card, which in its pre-IPO form was a
cooperative of banks who cooperated to
create a new interoperable, customerfacing
financial product.
• Star Alliance, which is not a cooperative
in the legal sense of the word but rather
an “alliance” of cooperating airlines.
Cooperative organisations are jointly
governed by those who use or consume
the cooperative’s services, hence:
45

• All members have an interest to grow
the cooperative and make it profitable.
• The cooperative is built to provide
services which enable the businesses of
each community member and therefore
provides direct benefit to each and all.
• The revenues of the cooperative
originate from fees by the cooperative
members.
• The revenues of the cooperatives
belong to the members of the
cooperative.
• Customer relationships and therefore
access to demand and liquidity stays
with the individual members.
This creates a self-reinforcing loop
of checks & balances. Members of a
cooperative are incentivized to fund the
cooperative with their fees while at the
same time being in control to keep those
fees within a range sustainable to their
individual core business.
A common infrastructure with the goal of
achieving net-zero carbon emission
Here I quote what to me has become a
manifest and gave me the inspiration for the
name of the company I have the privilege
of co-founding: Power & Mobility Ltd.:
Making the EU the world’s
first climate-neutral economy
will require more than just
an energy transition. To cut
CO2 emissions by 2050, many
sectors will need to make
far-reaching changes. Two
sectors that play a key role
in society have the leverage
needed to do this: power
and mobility. 1
By creating a common infrastructure
across these two sectors – sector coupling
Power & Mobility – balancing of renewable
power grids using vehicle-to-grid (V2G)
technologies has become possible. By
the economical and regulatory standards
of Europe it should be obvious that such
a platform can, may and should not be a
centralized platform at the mercy of one
centralized, profit-maximizing hyperaggregator.
Rather, such a platform needs
to be thought of, built and operated along
cooperative mechanisms. Decentralized
technologies lend themselves beautifully
to this!
1
elia group: “Accelerating to net-zero: redefining energy and mobility”
46

Conclusion: Decentralized networks
provide a commons for commerce to
digital cooperatives
The last twenty years have shown us how
software indeed is eating the world and have
brought powerful new actors to the world of
international commerce. Software platforms,
have now entered a phase where they
constitute a similar danger to competition
and market balance as Standard Oil did in
the early 1900s. Politicians and regulators
are recognizing this and are addressing it
with the means at their disposal.
Blockchain and other decentralized
technologies have emerged over the last
ten years and provide a paradigm by which
new cooperative platforms can be built,
combining the advantages platforms offer;
but with a more sustainable balance of
power among market participants.
Tokens provide a mechanism to program
the flow of money into community operated
and highly secure commercial platforms.
Combining the technical advantages of
decentralization with the purpose and
incentives of cooperatives, can create a
powerful counterbalance to centralized
platforms. As well as unleash new business
models in which power does not necessarily
accrue to centralized market makers but
is jointly held by a community of equal
cooperative members.
About:
Harry Behrens
Chairman and CTO of Power & Mobility
bloXmove.com
Harry Behrens, Chairman and CTO of Power & Mobility,
bloXmove.com, founded and headed the Daimler Mobility
Blockchain Factory until May 2021. He is a veteran Blockchain
evangelist since 2012. In 2016 he co-founded the DFS
Blockchain swarm and initiated the development of the
smartVIN ® Blockchain platform. Before starting his new
position as “Mr. Blockchain” for DMO AG, he was Head of IT for
Mobility and Digital Finance for MBAFC (DFS China). Harry has a
Master (Diplom) in Computer Science from the TU Muenchen,
with a thesis on Neural Networks, and a PhD in Information
Engineering from the University of Tokyo with a thesis on
Distributed Artificial Intelligence. He speaks six languages
fluently and is trying to learn Mandarin Chinese. In his private
time he enjoys practicing languages and reading about history.
TRENDING
47

Harnessing information and channeling its
energy to improve people’s financial activities
is the very essence of FinTech. The promise is
to thrust traditional financial services—banking,
insurance, and investment management—into
cyberspace where they can be reimagined
and elaborated by mobile software to add
both capability and fluidity to people’s lives.
This frontier of possibilities also brings new
challenges to the forefront: With more people
carrying their investment portfolios on their
mobile devices, FinTech is asked to deliver
high-quality, customized financial guidance
wherever and whenever people want it.
Finliti is ready to meet this challenge. Our goal
is to engage with investors in the ways that
are most personally meaningful and helpful
for them. We believe that investing should
be as fun and immersive or as serious and
disciplined as investors desire. We believe
in financial inclusion—that every investor, no
matter their experience or the size of their
portfolio, deserves access to personalized
financial advice. And most of all, we believe
that all investors deserve the opportunity to
earn good returns and meet their financial
objectives.
This is why we developed the Finliti Investor
Profile Indicator (FIPI), a rigorously developed
psychometric assessment and interactive
feedback platform that helps investors
understand how they allocate attention, make
decisions, and react to important market
events. The FIPI was developed by starting with
the recognition that each investor is unique.
We’ve all heard it before: Some investors
are more risk averse than others. True! But
have you ever pondered the fact that some
investors are more intellectually curious and
enthusiastic than others? That some investors
more readily defer to the advice of others?
And that some investors are dangerously
overconfident? More to the point: Did you
know that these investor characteristics are
as important as risk aversion? These are
real emotional and behavioral tendencies
that define the investor experience. For too
long, they have been difficult to measure
and frequently overlooked. Until now... The
FIPI unlocks investors’ self-knowledge and
transforms those self-insights into a more
optimal investing experience and motivation
for long-term success.
The FIPI is the culmination of considerable
research and development. It was developed
using a painstaking, “bottom-up” approach
that probed over 250 different beliefs,
preferences, emotional experiences, and
behavioral tendencies that are common to
self-directed investors. From this long list,
48

we distilled four personality traits using
advanced psychometric tools: Zeal, Inhibition,
Conventionality, and Swag. These traits can
be used to comprehensively describe the
psychological individuality of investors.
• Zealous investors tend to be enthusiastic
and can become overly excited and
sometimes even carried away by new
opportunities;
• Inhibited investors tend to be risk-averse,
easily lose confidence, and often feel
intimidated by the stock market;
• Conventional investors more readily
follow the advice of others, they trust “the
experts”;
• Swaggy investors tend to believe they
know more about investing than they
actually do and that they are immune to
experiencing negative financial events.
These FIPI traits characterize the psychological
landscape of self-directed investors. Our
research shows that the FIPI traits are reliably
related to key demographic variables like age
and level of education, differentially related
to economic and financial knowledge, and
predict financial behaviors and consequential
outcomes like the amount of trades that
investors execute, their levels of decision
paralysis, and their degree of impulsive
decision making. We presented some of this
research at the 7 th Biennial Meeting of the
Association for Research in Personality, which
took place in June, 2021.
Curious? Try our Discovery Survey for
FREE! It’s a miniature FIPI, powered by the
same psychometric insights but delivered
in abbreviated form. It will give you a broad
overview of your investing personality that is
equal parts informative and playful.
The complete FIPI feedback expands on the
micro-version. The feedback is longer, more
detailed, and offers many actionable insights.
It is reference material that - with the passage
of time - may aid in the development of deeper
self-understanding each time it is read anew.
It provides an objective viewpoint from which
investors can learn about their strengths,
identify their blind spots, and evaluate the
way they make investment-related decisions.
The goal isn’t to change investors’ personalities.
Rather, the purpose of FIPI’s feedback is
to help investors become more mindful
of their emotional tendencies so that they
can more easily stay focused and rationally
pursue their investment goals. For example,
Zealous investors are reminded about their
tendencies to bullishly rush into new positions;
Inhibited investors are reminded that risks
may be necessary to meet their objectives;
Conventional investors are encouraged to
crystallize their own opinions so that they
can hold their positions with more conviction;
and Swaggy investors are encouraged to
learn. The feedback is personal. The platform
is interactive. The insights are real.
Investors want high-quality, personalized
insight and they want to be able to access
it 24/7. The power of psychometrics can
be harnessed to deliver this more optimal
experience. So take a moment and give our
Discovery Survey a try.
About:
Jennifer Schell is the founder and CEO of Finliti that she built
to help investors make informed and impactful investment
decisions to enrich their lives by achieving their financial goals.
Her career spans over fifteen years across Canada’s major
financial institutions, where she’s been passionate about wealth
management and helping her clients align effective stock
market strategies with their core values. Finliti.com
About:
Jennifer Schell
Founder and CEO
Finliti
Dr. Stefano Di Domenico
Assistant Professor
University of Toronto Scarborough
Dr. Di Domenico is an Assistant Professor at the University
of Toronto Scarborough, where he teaches personality and
neuroscience. He has published dozens of articles, advancing
the modern understanding of motivation, personality, and
decision making. His current research focus is behavioral
finance and FinTech. He serves on Finliti’s advisory board.
TRENDING
49

FLOW: OB, CAN Trends, Beyond OB: BaaS +
Embedded Finance, tunl
The Open Banking model marks a global
evolution (although some experts talk about a
“revolution”) in the financial market. Motivated
by the increased need to respond to customer
demands, compete with new financial players
and meet regulation requirements, banks are
adopting API-based 1 business models. Open
Banking emerges in the financial industry
as a new model of collaboration with thirdparty
providers. By working in partnership
with fintech banks, they are able to expand
customer reach, accelerate the adoption
of new technologies, and create new
revenue streams. The underlying mindset
is the realization that complex problems
that demand immediate resolution, need
a strategy that taps into “the wisdom of the
many”, rather than siloed proprietary solutions.
While, in some countries like the US and
China, Open Banking is spreading only by
market forces, in other geographies the
regulatory agenda is playing a central role.
In Europe, some Asian and Latin American
regulators, often driven by financial inclusion
mandates, are promoting the shift to open
ecosystems by launching directives like the
well-known PSD2 2 in Europe and the Open
Banking Standard in the UK.
Taking into account these regulatory
successful practices, the government of
Canada appointed an Advisory Committee
(AC) in 2018 for the design and implementation
of the Open Banking framework. As a first
phase, the AC started with consultations
with stakeholders across Canada. Based on
its findings, in spring 2020 the committee
started the second phase, providing advice
on potential solutions and standards focusing
on data protection, privacy and security over
consumer’s personal data.
Bringing together the government and
the private industry, Canada is aiming
to embrace a hybrid, made-in-Canada
strategy. The scope is ambitious as all
federally regulated banks will be required
to participate while other regulated banks
could join on a voluntary basis. Despite
some delays due to the pandemic, the AC
plans to have the Open Banking regime
operational by January 2023.
1
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of definitions and protocols for building and integrating application software
2
PSD2 is the second Payment Services Directive, designed by the countries of the European Union
50

Canada Open Banking Phased Implementation Plan
Live Date January 2023
IN FOCUS
Source: Final Report, Advisory Committee on Open Banking
While the regulation is cautiously but
steadily progressing in Canada, leading
banks are already partnering with FinTechs
using APIs to deliver new digital products 3 .
Even later adopters are exploring new
technologies as COVID-19 forced them
to respond, adapt and innovate. As far as
fintechs are concerned, they have gained
attention by proving to be the solution to
navigate the crisis.
According to Accenture, Fintech Report
2020 4 , the Canadian FinTech industry is
booming with 700 FinTechs and hundreds of
nascent startups. Registering record levels
of investment, venture capitalists remain
optimistic despite COVID-19 uncertainty.
The potential of the Canadian ecosystem is
massive, especially when considering the
proactive approach taken by an efficient
public sector. That explains the surge of
many Canadian unicorns, like Clearco, a
lending platform, Coveo an AI platform
and Wealthsimple, an online investment
manager, to name a few.
Going beyond the Open Banking model, the
Canadian financial sector is also benefiting
by innovative collaborative structures like
Banking-as-a-Service 5 and Embedded
Finance. As an example we have Hopper, the
travel mobile-only app that uses predictive
analytics to make travel recommendations.
This Canadian unicorn, recently awarded as
the Best Travel App, provides information
about best deals on flight and hotels,
sends push notifications to their users when
best prices are available, suggests new
destinations based on your search and most
importantly allows the payment for all travel
services through one single interface.
Open Banking can and should be a journey
towards digital innovation. As FinConecta’s
Chief Business Officer Betty deVita
remarks: “Infrastructure is sexy” (and now
it is trendy!). There has never been a better
time for enabling new business models.
In March 2021 Amazon Web Services
(AWS) and FinConecta launched Open
Finance, a leading-edge platform based
3
How Canadian banks prepare for open Banking| Pwc article. Pwc Canadian-Banks 2019 Article
4
Canada Fintech Report| Accenture 2020 Accenture FIntech Report 2020
5
Banking-as-Service goes beyond the data sharing contemplated in Open Banking, including products that are embedded into the financial
institution’s own core, such as infrastructure, data and banking licenses on a white-labeled basis.
51

on FinConecta’s technology, that expands
the boundaries of Open Banking to the next
level”, deVita adds. “And now we landed
in Canada, as the engine behind tunl., an
API platform that brings together Financial
Institutions and Fintechs” (To learn more
about Ficanex and FinConecta’s joint launch
of tunl 2.0 click here).
The future is open and Canada is ramping
up. We anticipate dramatic changes in 2021
pushed by the FinTech sector growth and the
regulatory framework. If financial institutions
were contemplating digital transformation as
a “nice to have”, now is a must-have shift.
Bottom line is, great things are to come in
Canada. A flurry of fintech activity is gaining
traction, bolstering the ecosystem.This API
economy opens new horizons for all types
of institutions, by enabling collaboration and
the co-creation of new solutions leveraging
what others have available, in a robust,
interconnected and integrated roadmap.
As the old adage says: “If it’s not here, where;
if it’s not me, who; if it’s not now, when.”
About:
Betty DeVita
FinConecta, CBO
FinConecta
Betty is a global digital transformation executive with
expertise in consumer financial services/payments. Her
focus is on early-stage and emerging companies driving
value creation, partnerships and the path to global scaling. She
most recently served as Chief Commercial Officer of Digital
Payments & Labs at MasterCard. She also served as President
at MasterCard Canada. Prior to that she was with Citi in Latam,
the US and Asia in their consumer franchise and left Citi as
Chair/CEO for Citibank Canada Inc.Betty sits on the board of
Molson Coors Brewing Company (NYSE: TAP), where she sits
on the audit committee. She holds a Bachelor of Science from
St John’s University, a CEO Certificate from the Wharton-
KMA in South Korea and is a certified director from the
Institute of Corporate Directors, University of Toronto
52

The global stablecoin supply has exploded
in 2021, tripling in supply since the start of
the year with market cap surpassing USD
100 billion. What was once thought of as a
bridge between the fiat and crypto world
has increasingly become part of mainstream
financial transactions with use cases ranging
from access to crypto markets and a safehaven
asset to a means of payment for
goods and services, accessing yield in digital
markets, and remittances.
Stablecoins enjoy the benefits of blockchainbased
assets without the volatility of
traditional cryptocurrencies. The most popular
stablecoins are ‘backed’ or ‘tethered’ to a fiat
currency thus they achieve their ‘stability’ via
fiat collateral held in reserve. These reserves
are typically stored with a bank or some
other third-party requiring management
by a central authority, traditionally a private
company. The whole principle behind the
stability of this type of token is that you expect
that the collateral held in reserve is equal to
the stablecoin tokens that exist and that it is
being held by a reliable entity.
Users of stablecoins should ask themselves:
What proof is there that the collateral reserves
are actually there? Do they have the value that
has been indicated to the market? In what
jurisdiction are the reserves held and are
they being held by a regulated entity? Does
the entity issuing the stablecoin have the
appropriate licenses and are they following
appropriate regulations to operate?
Stablecoin-issuing companies seek to provide
an element of trust and answers to these
questions by providing regular attestations
that the stablecoins are fully collateralized
by a reserve, often done by a third-party
auditor, as well as providing proof of licenses
and registration to operate in the jurisdiction
in question. But why not take this another
step further? Rather than a stablecoin being
‘tethered’ or ‘backed’ to a fiat currency or bank
deposit, why not create a stablecoin that is an
actual bank deposit; a digital representation
of a bank deposit?
Stablecorp and VersaBank have partnered
together to do just that: create a token, VCAD,
that differs from the traditional stablecoin
model in that it is a digital representation of
a deposit at an A-rated Canadian Schedule I
Bank. Schedule I banks are fully audited, well
capitalized, and highly regulated by one of the
world’s most respected financial regulators. In
other words, you do not have to worry about
the value of your stablecoin, whether it is
“backed” in some offshore jurisdiction beyond
Canadian (or any) regulation, or whether
you can redeem it today for fiat. There is no
54

guessing game. A VCAD is a digital, secure,
transferable bank deposit receipt facilitated
by the blockchain. It has all the features of a
cryptocurrency but addresses the two major
shortcomings of the traditional cryptocurrency
market – volatility and security. For all intents
and purposes, it will function as the ‘stablest
of stablecoins’ offering the highest level
of stability and security amongst all digital
currencies in the market today.
Jean Desgagne
CEO
Canada Stablecorp
IN FOCUS
About:
Jean Desgagne is CEO of Canada Stablecorp. He is also a
Corporate Director, Advisor, and Leader. He brings to his role
deep C-suite and Board experience within large multinational
financial institutions, exchanges & market infrastructures - in
risk, operations, technology, finance and innovation. Current
and past Board Member for regulated financial companies,
government agencies, industry associations, universities and
not-for-profit organizations. Advisor to several startups in the
blockchain, Fintech, platform and data spaces.
55

Today, China and the United States are
competing and growing their technological
capabilities in a wide array of sectors. The
cutting-edge area of America and China’s
technological war that’s been heating up
recently is around who will dominate the
blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.
Although China has cracked down on
cryptocurrencies, shutting down all domestic
crypto exchanges and banning all ICOs,
blockchain technology itself is recognized
as a revolutionary development by the
government. In a speech October 2019
speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared
blockchain would play “an important role in
the next round of technological innovation
and industrial transformation.” That marked
the first major world leader to issue such a
strong endorsement of the widely hyped – but
still unproven – distributed ledger technology
(DLT). (By contrast, most governments in the
West have been far more cautious.)
Calling for blockchain to become a focus of
national innovation, President Xi’s speech
detailed the ways the Chinese government
would support blockchain research,
development, and standardization. China’s
leadership position in the global competition
of central bank digital currency (CBDC) is the
prime example.
In April 2020, the People’s Bank of China
(PBOC), China’s central bank unveiled the
world’s first sovereign digital currency that is
based on blockchain-like technology. (PBOC
has started research and development
for a digital version of the yuan, known as
e-CNY, since 2014.) Since then, China has
been steadily expanding its digital yuan
pilot programs while also cracking down
on cryptocurrencies. In July 2021, the
PBOC issued a white paper detailing the
current workings of the digital yuan, also
referred to as the e-CNY, which is the first
comprehensive disclosure of its plans.
The release of the white paper probably
marks the near end of the testing phase,
and the official launch may occur soon at
the Winter Olympics in Beijing next year.
As such, China is likely to be the first major
economy to introduce a sovereign digital
currency.
The rapid development of the e-CNY is
only an inevitable result of China’s robust
digital economy. Even before the digital
economy, mobile pay has grown rapidly
in the last several years to become the
dominant form of payment in China. Since
2020, China has been steadily expanding
its digital yuan pilot programmes, given the
country’s rapid development of internet
56

industries such as e-commerce and social
network platforms that provide a myriad of
application scenarios.
operated cross-border payment networks,
such as Swift, which the US has used to
enforce sanctions.
The digital yuan wallet supports several
functions, including scan to pay, top-ups
and money transfers. According to the white
paper, as of June 2021, participants have
spent 34.5 billion digital yuan ($5.3 billion)
in trials. Uses include paying utility, dining,
transportation, shopping, and government
services. The new digit yuan would allow
users to spend it even without an internet
connection, and it will bring convenience
to foreigners, too. “Foreign residents
temporarily traveling in China can open an
e-CNY wallet to meet daily payment needs
without opening a domestic bank account,”
said the white paper.
That means even foreigners traveling in
China can have access to the digital yuan
without a domestic bank account. This is a
particular benefit given the difficulties that
foreigners have had using mobile payment
apps like WeChat Pay (of Tencent) and
AliPay (of Alibaba), because those apps
must be linked to banking accounts.
But it’s likely a long march for the e-CNY.
“Though technically ready for cross-border
use, e-CNY is still designed mainly for
domestic retail payments at present.” the
paper reads. For the e-CNY, its real test only
starts after its upcoming official launch.
About:
Winston Ma
Co-Founder and Managing Partner
of CloudTree Ventures and an adjunct
professor at the NYU School of Law
Winston Ma, CFA & Esq. (@Winston_W_Ma), is a Co-Founder
and Managing Partner of CloudTree Ventures and an adjunct
professor at the NYU School of Law. He is the former
managing director and head of the North America office at
China Investment Corporation (CIC), and author of Investing
in China, China’s Mobile Economy, The Hunt for Unicorns,
and The Digital War.
IN FOCUS
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that in its white
paper, the PBOC cited the rapid growth in
cryptocurrencies as a driver for research
and development of the e-CNY and said that
“cryptocurrencies are mostly speculative
instruments, and therefore pose potential
risks to financial security and social stability”.
This is the first time that the PBOC, in an
official document, linked its sovereign digital
currency issuance with cryptocurrencies’
potential challenges to the international
monetary system. According to the PBOC,
“cryptocurrencies’ lack of intrinsic value,
acute price fluctuations, low trading
efficiencies and huge energy consumption
make them unfit for use in daily economic
activities”.
Of course, the profound impact of e-CNY is
likely to be more than China’s retail markets.
Many believe the e-CNY will bolster Chinese
currency’s global status and eventually
challenge the US Dollar’s preeminent
position as the world’s reserve currency. For
example, the e-Yuan could bypass western-
57

In a landscape where cryptocurrencies and
blockchain technologies are experiencing
confusion and volatile action, TAAL is focused
on bringing stability to the chaos.
Our company is a pure play on the value and
enormous potential of BitcoinSV (BSV) to
reshape how global commerce functions. As
blockchain usage accelerates, so too does
the understanding of what is needed to make
its utility value impactful — and its fluctuations
far more steady. Scale and reliability on the
network are essential to driving adoption and
eliminating skepticism about blockchain’s
long-term viability.
We chose to the BSV network because it has
the world’s lowest blockchain transaction
costs. And its lead in that area is simply
untouchable.
In April 2021, the average cost per BSV
transaction was $0.0062, which was
exponentially less than the Ethereum ($17.21)
or Bitcoin ($30.79) networks for the same
period. BSV is also designed to meet the
massive demand from enterprises and
governments for a secure blockchain solution.
That attribute aligns with TAAL’s strategy
to offer tools and services that help people
and organizations operate commercial
applications on bitcoin. As the global leader
in BSV transaction processing, TAAL is poised
to capitalize tremendously as more and more
organizations migrate to the network because
of its very low fees and massive ability to scale.
Already, we have entered into a phase of rapid
growth. With our operations broadening, we
have added talent and ingenuity to our team
while also rolling out new products that help
the world adapt to the era of blockchain.
Trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange
(ticker symbol: TAAL | OTC:TAALF), our
company’s public status ensures customers
that we are compliant with regulations. In our
financial report for the first quarter of 2021, we
noted several recent successes, including:
• On March 13, TAAL processed a world
record 638 MB block on the BSV network
• As of May 25, TAAL had approximately
84,000 BSV in its treasury
• Based on current network conditions,
TAAL anticipates winning at least 30
blocks per day.
Even better, the TAAL stock price has
experienced phenomenal growth during the
past 12 months, advancing from a 52-week
low of $1.42 to as high as $8.75 in the early
weeks of 2021. The company’s market cap is
at approximately $165 million.
58

We expect that to rise as we continue to
deliver value-added services, providing
highly scalable blockchain infrastructure and
transaction processing to support businesses
building solutions and applications on the
BSV platform. As our client base increases
and as BSV’s value lifts off, we anticipate
TAAL’s products and services will be viewed
as an important part of digital infrastructure
for many businesses.
What we know for certain is blockchain is only
at the beginning of showing what it can do.
Not only is it fascinating to be operating in this
sector, but it is also inspiring to know we are
working with the solution that will so positively
impact the world for years to come.
Chris Naprawa
TAAL President
TAAL
IN FOCUS
59

During this year’s investment period, The
Holt Xchange hyper-targeted 7 main
verticals that deemed most promising:
digital identity, regtech, insurtechs,
cybersecurity, digital lending, wealthtech,
and digital assets. As a result, this led to
better targeted candidates and as such,
a greater number of applications were a
better fit for our investment program and
Holt Ecosystem.
As a way to engage with fintechs in these
verticals, Holt hosted the ‘Holt Invests’
Webinar Series featuring special Holt
Advisors and alumni portfolio companies
who are experts in this space. As such, we
were able to engage in some engaging
conversations as they shared firsthand
insights on the current trend and
opportunities.
The webinars consisted of the following:
1. The I AM Webinar explored trends and
opportunities found within RegTech
& Digital ID industries. It’s clear that
compliance costs are surging and
expected to continue this trend. For
instance in 2018, businesses spent $1.3
million on average to meet compliance
requirements and were expected to
put in an additional $1.8 million (IAAP).
In Europe, GDPR played a large role
in compliance related cost increases
for business, with more expected to
come. Given Canada is moving forward
nationally with programs like Bill C and
provincially, such as Quebec’s Bill 64,
we expect compliance costs in Canada
to further continue. Additionally, FAbout
25% of all financial services applications
are abandoned due to friction in the
Know Your Customer (KYC) process, in
part because current Identity Verification
(IDV) procedures fail users. Need for
consumers to support. To better prepare
for these proposed legislative changes
(ie. among many others), as well as
support KYC / AML process, this year we
invested in following regtech companies:
a) RequirementOne requirementone.
com: Supercharge compliance power
users and their ecosystem as Apple
did for the mobile phone user.
b) DigiPli digipli.com: We’re redefining
how financial institutions onboard
customers by bundling a SaaS-based,
end-to-end onboarding tool with
ongoing support from AML experts.
2. The I BORROW Webinar explored the
opportunities and trends found within
Digital Lending space. There continues to
60

e an emergence of alternative lending
options, pushing lenders to compete
on price, demographics and ancillary
product offerings. Additionally new
offerings such as revenue base financing,
and buy-now-pay-later, are received
with greater comfort by investors and
customers alike. As such, while looking
into alternative financing options and
recognizing the lack of options for first
time buyers in a surging real-estate
market, we invested in a new financing
product of:
a) FirstStep Financial firststepfinancial.
ca: Opening the Door to Home
Ownership. Digital Lending
3. The I EARN Webinar explored the
opportunities and trends within Digital
Assets, Investment & WealthTech
industries. For instance, A survey
conducted by the Alternative Investment
Management Association and SS&C
found that out of 100 global hedge
fund managers, 69% of the market
leaders use alternative data to boost
performance. Also considering property
earning assets, the real estate market
showed no sign of slowing, and real
estate sector funding appeared to be
making a comeback early in the year,
with VC funding to proptech companies
growing 29% to $2.4B for Q1’21. Given
the need for better solutions in trading
and real-estate, we invested in:
a) CityFalcon cityfalcon.com: Using Big
Data, AI, and NLP, we democratize
access to financial content, personalize
it, add analytics, and deliver it in realtime
in 50+ languages. Capital Markets
b) Reitium reitium.com: REITIUM is a
blockchain real estate marketplace
where everyone can be an investor
starting with $100. PropTech
over $6 billion in funding. The number
of deals (114) increased by 50%, with 18
mega-rounds accounting for over 75%
of the total funding. From a banking
side, according to Accenture, over
50% of banking tasks are still manually
performed. By using technology, banks
in North America can save more than
70 billion USD through 2025. Not only
can technology improve the bottom line
for banks, but we are witnessing better
customer centric designs to better tailor
and serve niche demographics and
communities. As such, we invested in the
following payment and niche banking
companies:
a) Payzel payzel.com: Forged out of
frustration we are building the GE
Capital for Innovative Industries like
cannabis. Digital Payments
b) Phaze phaze.io: A prepaid payouts
API for fintechs. Digital Payments
c) PeopleHedge peoplehedge.
com(MAYBE)
The Holt Xchange has just invested in 8 of
the best fintechs that build solutions for our
society’s greatest challenges. They kickedoff
their Growth Acceleration Program and
are already in the process of working closely
with the portfolio companies and leveraging
their global advisory network to help drive
their business growth.
I am very excited to work
with this year’s portfolio
investments, complemented
with 500+ Advisors, and to have
the backing of key partners
like Fairstone, RBC, MNP, BDC
and Montreal International.
stated founding managing
partner Jan Arp.
IN FOCUS
4. While not a webinar in itself, the theme
of I TRANSFER emerged throughout
the series, focusing on payments and
banking. Payments remains the largest
attraction for VC investment, whereby
funding for payments companies tripled
compared to the previous quarter, with
If you are interested to learn more about us,
or meet our portfolio companies or Advisors
highly suggest you attend our Fintech Show
2021 either remotely or in-person: Fintech
Show 2021.
61

What’s Next for the Holt Xchange? The
Holt Fintech Show
• When: Tue Nov 16, 2021
• Where: Rialto Theatre (Montreal, QC)
• Agenda:
• 6 PM - 7 PM: Doors Open
• 7 PM - 8:15 PM: Fintech Show
• 8:15 PM - 9:00 PM : After Show
• Tickets to register: https://bit.ly/3tdicJA
The world-famous Holt Fintech Show, in
which our Holt 2021 Portfolio Companies will
pitch their progress to date and share their
next key milestones that the audience may
want to get involved with, such as investing,
partnerships, new clients, mentoring, etc.
This is a great networking opportunity for
anyone looking to get more involved in the
fintech ecosystem.
* If you can’t make the in-person event,
virtual options are available.
Join the LinkedIn event page here and
remember to register a spot as spaces are
limited!
About:
Jan Arp
Managing Partner
Holt Accelerator
Jan is a fintech evangelist, passionate about improving society
through finance and technology. He founded FormFintech that
supports or has formed over 100 fintech startups. Prior to this,
he worked as Head of Finance at District 3, helping 20 early
stage teams raise more than $15 million, and was Head of
Finance at bus.com, helping it from incorporation to Series A.
He also worked as a consultant for billion dollar infrastructure
projects on behalf of banks. He holds an MBA from HEC, a
finance degree from Ottawa University, and passed II levels of
the CFA.
STRATEGIC PR & MARKETING
For the Fintech and
Blockchain Industries
We craft compelling, individualized PR
campaigns to help you stand out in an
increasingly competitive technology landscape
Find out what we can do for you.
PR Strategy | Media Relations
Content Creation | Analyst Relations
TheTopFloorAgency.com
Email: pr@thetopflooragency.com
Phone: +1 (905) 379 1893
62

PARTICIPATION
COLLABORATION & IMPACT
CONFERENCE THEMES
o
o
o
o
o
o
3 Day Virtual Conference
500+ Attendees
100+ Speakers
60+ Sessions
Covid-19 Fundraiser
Live Pitching Finals
o
o
o
o
o
24 Event Sponsors
50+ Media and Community Partners
Launches, Demos + Innovation
Partnerships + Investment
Diversity + Inclusiveness
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
DeFi, Web 3.0, NFTs, CBDCs
Digital assets, Open Finance
IPO Innovations, Stakeholder Capitalism
Digital Identity, Data Privacy
Financial Health / PFM
Sustainable Finance
Leadership, Talent Sourcing
“You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage
to lose sight of the shore.” – Andre Gide

2 nd ANNUAL 2021 FINTECH DRAFT
Inspired by sports league drafts, the inaugural 2020 Fintech Draft Pitching & Demo competitions
were held virtually on May 12-13, 2021 where 6 pitching finalists competed for exposure,
prizes, introductions to investors, media and prospective buyers and a complimentary one
(1) year industry partnership with NCFA. The annual program is sponsored by NCFA and open
to Canadian and international companies in the fintech sector and designed to identify and
feature emerging and high growth fintech startups and scaleups. Finalists were evaluated
on a variety of criteria such as strategy, traction, product/market fit and need, differentiation,
innovation, x-factor and ability to answer judges’ questions.
Judges:
Praveen K. Varshney
Director
Varshney Capital Corp.
Som Seif
CEO
Purpose Financial/Purpose Investments
Dave Unsworth
Co-Founder and General Partner
Information Venture Partners
David Nault
Co-Founder & General Partner
Luge Capital
Missed FFCON21 Breaking Barriers? Checkout the Session Recordings -> here
66

Isaque Eberhardt
CEO & Co-founder
Location: Brasília Vertical: Digital Banking / Analytics / Infrastructure
Year Founded: 2019 Employees: 1 – 10
Website: agryo.com
Agryo is a global risk intelligence provider that enables financial institutions to assess and
manage financial risks in the crop field level for underwriting agriculture insurance, loans, and
trade finance globally; as well as meet sustainability goals. They are a US C Corp enterprise
SaaS provider, a mix of rating provider like Equifax/Moodys + infrastructure provider like Plaid
for the financial and environmental services in the ag space.
67

Michael Sikorksy
CEO
Location: Calgary and San Diego Vertical: Wealthtech / Alternative Investing
Year Founded: 2021 Employees: 15 – 50
Website: copiawealthstudios.com
Copia Wealth Studios is a financial intelligence platform that uses modern design and machine
learning to bring all your investments (including Alternatives and Illiquid assets) into one elegant
view.
68

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FINTECH DRAFT
69

NAVA
VENTURES
FFCON21 PITCHING FINALIST
Problem:
Credit unions have gotten used to baby
boomers never moving their funds and have
failed to increase technological innovation. As
the baby boomers age, they leave over $30
trillion dollars to the younger generations. This
next generation isn’t like the baby boomers.
They switch from financial institutions based
on technological innovation and social impact.
Some big banks anticipated the generational
wealth transfer and did a better job over the
years to try and innovate. Credit unions, however,
got left behind and continue losing members
daily to the big banks. We have interviewed
credit union executives and they agreed that it
is difficult to recruit tech talent to build solutions
in-house and create a sticky ecosystem to help
their members achieve financial wellness.
Core Benefits:
At Nava Ventures, we are going to offer an
ecosystem of sticky socially responsible
products that will help both credit unions
and their members. These products include
BI tools, rewards, money transfer, loans,
and investments. meetNavi is our market
entry product for credit unions. It empowers
members to make socially responsible financial
decisions. Credit union executives have told
us that they see deep value in meetNavi and
can see it helping with their member financial
wellness, retention, engagement, and help
increase liquidity. meetNavi is different from
competitors because it uses machine learning
to provide personalized guidance to credit
union members. Another key component of our
app is that it is social and invites member-tomember
collaboration.
We have user tested meetNavi at every stage
and have some remarkable quotes to show for
it:
– “Other banks don’t have anything like this.”
– “I love this! It feels like you’re using Fitbit. I would
definitely use it. Is it ready to use right now?”
Ideal Customers:
We follow a B2B2C model. Our ideal customers
are financial Institutions (Credit Unions/Banks).
Milestones:
• 2 Partnered with FrontFundr to launch
crowdfunding round (see our website for
details)
• 2 LOIs from credit unions in BC
• Winners of Startup Canada SDG Pitch
Competition 2020 for Poverty Reduction
• Winners of BoomStartup Global Pitch
Competition for Finance
• Top 24 Finalist at the OKGN Summit
• SFU Venture Connection Coast
Capital Venture Prize Finalists
(Digital Platform Category)
70

FORWARDAI
FINTECH DRAFT
FFCON21 PITCHING FINALIST
Problem:
The small business lending process at
most institutes today is highly manual and
conducted across a multitude of unintegrated
systems. We believe that a shift is happening
in the small business lending and underwriting
decisions; the focus is moving from historical
to real-time predictive data. Currently,
accounting, and financial data are locked
in silos, creating workflow inefficiencies,
and hindering digital transformation.
Core Benefits:
We are the only provider that offers
critical accounting and financial data in
both historical and predictive formats. We
further cross-validate accounting data with
multiple bank accounts data that a business
may be using to help with the authenticity
of the data or detect fraud. We believe
that high-frequency small amount funding
decisions can be fully automated using
real-time business data. Our technology
is helping banks and lenders solve
complicated problems so that they are not
flying blind. Lenders can develop targeted
marketing campaigns; for example, funding
applications are rejected because small
businesses could not qualify for the loan,
but if the connection is continuous, the
lender may notice when that business may
be eligible and come up with a product offer.
Every accounting data provider is unique
and offers data through API in a special
format. It is a daunting task to understand
and implement these APIs into a decision
engine in any normalized & secure way. This
is where ForwardAI’s API shines; our API
provides context-rich data(information about
recurring invoices or bills, whether paying
bills or receiving payments on time, etc.) in
a standardized format regardless of who the
endpoint is. Once our API is implemented,
lenders can download accounting data from
many accounting platforms in a simple,
straightforward way without worrying about
various formats.
Ideal Customers:
Businesses (B2B)
Milestones:
• The company is in active discussions
with many possible clients to use its
technology and recently signed up a
lender in Australia as its first customer.
• We are currently outreaching to
alternative lenders in UK, Australia, New
Zealand, the USA, and Canada while
working on our SOC2 audit compliance.
71

ORCHID B
FFCON21 PITCHING FINALIST
Problem:
Entrepreneurs require the services of up to
20 different back-office providers to manage
banking, payroll, invoices, reconciliations,
accounting adjustments, tax, and statutory
returns. That’s over 200 processes that need
handling every year, in separate systems,
that don’t talk to each other. A sole-proprietor
spends up to 25,000 dollars a year in back
office fees. Including their billable time, that
can mean 65,000 dollars every year, and
even more for SMEs.
Core Benefits:
We’re launching with a payments and
cards business in Canada with invoice and
expense management: the heart of Orchid
B. Onboarding in just 10 minutes with cards
available immediately on mobile. Next,
we will scale Orchid B by building out it’s
brain; payroll, accounting, tax, and statutory
reporting. By year 5, Orchid B will be running
the entire back-office for small businesses
with currency wallets, insurance, and
business registration, all in one. Our frontend
interface will provide the best possible
experience. By integrating with specialised
“back-end” partners, we will not reinvent
the wheel. One value chain for all the
entrepreneur’s back-office data. We will save
our clients a lot of time and money.
Ideal Customers:
Businesses to Business (B2B)
Milestones:
• Version 1 of a high fidelity front-end
prototype is ready
72

PHAZE
FFCON21 PITCHING FINALIST
FINTECH DRAFT
Problem:
93% of the world’s money is non-physical,
yet less than 1% of it is made instantly and
globally spendable to account holders from
neobanks, wallets and fintech companies.
Many companies seek to solve this problem
by issuing prepaid Visa debit cards.
Unfortunately, they are only available to
users in select countries and require a lot of
time and money to go live on a per-country
basis.
Core Benefits:
We give our customers superpowers so
with just a few lines of code, companies can
go live in hours not months, globally, in a
compliant way.
Ideal Customers:
Businesses (B2B2C)
Milestones:
• Hit $16,500 in monthly revenue
73

FFCON 2020-21
FINTECH
DRAFT PICKS
Migrations.ml helps asset managers increase
their returns and avoid losses in the bond
market. Using machine learning, it enables
researchers, traders and portfolio managers
to analyze more bonds, make decisions faster
and get more precise analytics.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2019
Vertical: Capital markets / Decentralized
Finance / Crowdfinance
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: migrations.ml
ENGAIZ has developed an AI-Driven SaaS
platform to help enterprises mitigate Third-
Party Risks such as Cybersecurity, Data
Privacy, Regulatory through an effective
Governance and Engagement framework.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2019
Vertical: Third-Party Governance & Risk
Management
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: engaiz.com
Finally is a DIY Financial Planning Simulator
that allows users to create a free financial
plan in less than 20 minutes, and understand
the products and providers that can help you
reach your goals faster.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2019
Vertical: Personal Finance
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: myfinally.com
Kalsa is an app where friends can save money
together for things that connect them
Railz provides a single API that integrates
with the majority of accounting software
service providers used by small businesses.
They provide quick, low cost and direct
access to both existing and new customers’
accounting software systems and are solving
the traditional challenges the Small Business
lending market has seen for years with
respect to time, cost and risk.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2020
Vertical: Lending / Borrowing
Employees: 11 – 50
Website: Railz.ai
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2020
Vertical: Personal Finance
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: Kalsa.co
74

knnct’s robust P2P platform for brokers &
lenders lets them get mortgage deals done
quicker and easier. Brokers create a digital
mortgage application, post their deal and then
knnct filters & matches the deal with lenders
whose lending criteria matches the deal &
have access to all compliance docs.
Their mission is to help people take charge
of managing their personal finances to help
them achieve financial well-being. Kaira’s
Financial Wellness Coach comes in the
form of a mobile, it gives personalized and
proactive advice to relevant events with the
aim of achieving Financial Wellness.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2018
Vertical: Lending / Borrowing
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: knnct.com
Location: Boucherville, QC
Year Founded: 2018
Vertical: Personal Finance
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: Kaira.ai
FINTECH DRAFT
Lagoon empowers investment professionals
in capital markets with data science tools,
without the need to write a single line of
code. The platform places the human at the
center (HITL), allowing the user to customize
and control metrics to generate explainable,
data- driven insights.
Location: Tel Aviv
Year Founded: 2020
Vertical: Digital Banking / Analytics /
Infrastructure
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: www.data-lagoon.com/
The challenge for group insurers is
administrative complexity. Sentro tailor
plans for every customer. But they try do
it with legacy technology that holds them
back. Sentro lets group insurers offer their
customers and partners choice and flexibility,
in a highly efficient way.
Location: Auckland, NZ
Year Founded: 2019
Vertical: Insurtech
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: Sentro.co
Established in 2018, Bitvo is a cryptocurrency
exchange that facilitates buying, selling and
trading cryptocurrencies through its bestin-class
website and mobile applications.
Bitvo offers seven different cryptocurrencies,
including Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Bitcoin Cash,
Litecoin, Dash, Ethereum Classic and QCAD,
Canada’s first stable coin designed for the
mass market.
Location: Toronto, Calgary
Year Founded: 2017
Vertical: Blockchain / Digital Assets /
Cryptocurrency
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: bitvo.com
Moves is a financial services platform for
independent “gig” workers. Overlooked or
ineligible for products offered by traditional
financial institutions, this rapidly expanding
demographic needs modern financial products
designed to support them on their paths to
career fulfillment.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2020
Vertical: Personal Finance
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: Movesfinancial.com
75

Finnovate.io has established itself as a
trusted software development partner in the
Canadian Fintech ecosystem through a wide
variety of leading edge projects. Working
with companies of all sizes, from start-ups
to Canada’s largest banks, Finnovate.io has
repeatedly demonstrated an ability to provide
technical support and expertise in all stages
of product development.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2017
Vertical: Software Development for Fintech
Employees: 11 – 50
Website: finnovate.io
NuMoola is the industry’s first familyfocused
consumer banking app that uses
real money, gamified education, and the
family network to teach kids (and parents!)
about managing money, missions, and
budgets. The NuMoola App focuses on
family togetherness by encouraging family
goal setting and initiating conversations
about money management.
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Year Founded: 2017
Vertical: EdTech
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: numoola.com
Fidectus automates post-deal processing
in energy trading. They connect market
participants and optimize their working
capital. Their clients optimize their working
capital while benefiting of highest resilience
and ROI.
Location: Zürich
Year Founded: 2020
Vertical: Finance / Accounting
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: Fidectus.com
Powered by unbiased AI data aggregation,
Arbor is a social spending platform that educates
consumers on the impact of their spending.
Arbor empowers everyday consumers like
you, to make informed decisions about where
and how you spend your hard-earned dollars.
Location: Calgary
Year Founded: 2019
Vertical: Digital Banking / Analytics /
Infrastructure
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: yourarbor.com
Balance offers an insured institutional grade
digital asset custody and wallet management
solution to crypto exchanges, OTC desks, and
funds. Assets are kept secure in geographically
distributed offline vaults on dedicated, military
grade hardware.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2017
Vertical: Blockchain / Digital Assets /
Cryptocurrency
Employees: 1- 10
Website: balance.ca
Green Apple Pay is a digital fundraising
platform for organizations like charities,
nonprofits and other community based
groups to generate new recurring revenues
from spare change and cashback rewards
from their stakeholders’ everyday spending. It
works like a rewards program for organizations
that fundraise.
Location: Burlington, ON
Year Founded: 2018
Vertical: Payments / Transfers / Rewards
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: greenapplepay.com
76

Senso embeds predictive revenue
intelligence into lender operations to optimize
loan portfolio retention, acquisition, and
product cross sell. Senso’s suite of solutions
helps sales, marketing, and customer success
teams in the financial services industry
improve customer experience, retention, and
profitability.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2017
Vertical: Digital Banking / Analytics /
Infrastructure
Employees: 11 – 50
Website: senso.ai
SolidBlock makes property work for everyone.
We are building a new asset class based on real
estate, combining the stability of the property
market growth and efficiency of blockchain-based
financial products. SolidBlock creates tradable
digital assets backed by real estate that grant
investors rights to revenue, dividends, or interest
and allow them to benefit from the growth of their
property as well as trade their assets at any time.
Location: Tel Aviv
Year Founded: 2018
Vertical: Real Estate
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: SolidBlock.co
FINTECH DRAFT
Benefi is a fintech platform that is disrupting
the pay-day loan and predatory lending
market. We leverage AI and a unique
employee benefit channel to level the playing
field and serve underserved segments in the
$548 billion Canadian lending market with
affordable credit and financial literacy.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2020
Vertical: Lending / Borrowing
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: Benefi.ca
WALO’s mission is to ensure the next generation’s
financial wellbeing through a gamified financial
literacy platform. The WALO app integrates with
parents’ & their tweens/teens bank accounts and
teaches youngsters how to become financially
responsible. Our beta is available in the App
Store and Google Play.
Location: Quebec City
Year Founded: 2018
Vertical: Personal Finance
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: walo.app
We make the world smarter by connecting
existing infrastructure to cutting edge internet
of things technology and modern payment
solutions in a secure, scalable, and seamless
way.
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Year Founded: 2018
Vertical: Digital Banking / Analytics /
Infrastructure
Employees: 11 – 50
Website: Trust Anchor Group
FundMore is focused on providing a simpler
mortgage experience for Canadians by being
the leader in mortgage process automation. Our
mission to provide a completely underwritten
mortgage decision in 60 seconds.
Location: Ottawa
Year Founded: 2018
Vertical: Lending / Borrowing
Employees: 11 – 50
Website: FundMore.ai
77

MazumaGo is a lean structured, fast-growing
Fintech start-up that enables businesses to
move away from cheques by giving them a
simple solution to send and receive no limit
payments for a flat fee. With MazumaGo,
businesses can collect money from
customers, pay suppliers, set-up recurring
transactions and move money between
internal accounts at different banks – all in
one dashboard. The company was founded
by a group of three technical co-founders
based out of Victoria, B.C., who built the
software entirely in-house. Since launching
the software in September 2019, MazumaGo
has processed a total transaction volume of
$11.2 million with over 30 active customers.
Cyclebit empowers retailers to take advantage
of new payment offerings, devices, and user
knowledge in order to provide a superior,
more engaging payments experience. We
provide simple, affordable and robust tools for
retailers to accept digital currencies, credit/
debit and cash transactions for in-store, online
and on-the-go purchases.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2018
Vertical: Blockchain / Digital Assets /
Cryptocurrency
Employees: 11 – 50
Website: cyclebit.io
Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
Year Founded: 2018
Vertical: Finance / Accounting
Employees: 1 – 10
Website: MazumaGo
The Digital Economy is worth 3+ trillion
dollars today, and yet, the majority of small
businesses in this space don’t have access
to growth capital because they don’t have
tangible assets to collateralize. Corl has
developed a financing platform that leverages
data, automation, and machine learning to
offer revenue-sharing financing to small
businesses. Using 10,000+ data points on a
business, we are able to analyze businesses
in under 24 hours, mitigate risk through our
proprietary technology and product, and
capture market share in this new asset class
by earning a % of a business’ monthly gross
revenue in exchange for capital.
Location: Toronto
Year Founded: 2017
Vertical: Capital markets / Decentralized
Finance / Crowdfinance
Employees: 1- 10
Website: corl.io
78

Thanks to our valued industry partners, innovators and leaders
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association of Canada is grateful to and
recognizes the following industry partners/sponsors for their support and commitment
to NCFA Canada’s mandate to develop Canada into a world class fintech, blockchain,
P2P, crowdfunding, alternative, innovative and digital finance centre by providing
education and research, advocacy and networking opportunities for members in
the rapidly evolving Fintech & Funding industry. Our partners are industry builders
who have provided a significant level of service and/or contribution towards the
sustainability and growth of NCFA Canada and the Canadian Alternative Finance and
Fintech sectors. Please support our network of industry partners/sponsors and ecosystem
supporters by engaging directly with their companies to demo, buy, support,
and promote their collection of high quality products and services.
79

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