Earlier this week, the Canadian fintech ecosystem gathered at OneEleven for an exclusive panel discussion exploring the future of financial technology in Canada.
The event, hosted in partnership with Fintech.ca and Category Communications, brought together some of fintech’s top founders and investors in Canada to discuss the rapidly changing economic climate and what the impact could be on the 2025 fintech landscape.
Moderated by Tal Schwartz, General Partner at Exit North Ventures the panel featured Andrew Graham, co-founder and CEO at Borrowell, Cato Pastoll, co-founder and CEO at Loop, Yvette Wu, co-founder and CEO at Yield Exchange and Laviva Mazhar, Principal at Luge Capital.
Navigating Uncertainty
There’s no doubt that the first few weeks of 2025 have posed a significant challenge for Canadian fintech founders, from navigating the political issues right here at home alongside the incoming tariff threat from our neighbours to the south.
“Layering on these tariffs is doing damage to the economy right now,” Andrew Graham shared. “Uncertainty is a tax – it’s a tax on getting things done.”
Similarly, Laviva Mahzar shared that “we’re having a lot of conversations with our portfolio companies that are focused on selling to Americans on ways to establish more of a US footprint right now so it looks and feels like they’re buying American.”
Fundraising
As so many know, Canadian businesses are known to be more capital efficient when compared to US counterparts – whether this is out of necessity or inherent to Canadian founders – was a big part of the conversation.
“Canadian founders are more capital efficient, yes, but it is out of necessity,” Cato Pastoll shared. “If I was a Canadian policymaker, I’d much rather have more capital in the ecosystem. At the end of the day, it means that people that create businesses in Canada are so focused on selling to the US market.”
Yvette Wu shared her experience raising as an early-stage founder, explaining that“it’s hard to get that initial funding as a pre-seed and seed founder. However, the pros of a tight fundraising market is that it creates high levels of pressure to drive results and ultimately when you do that you have a stronger company.”
When comparing the Canadian market, Luge Capital’s Mahzar shared that “the U.S. angel ecosystem is so incredibly vibrant with many founders having had exits, which supports the early stage market in a different way than is happening in Canada.”
Opportunity and White Space
There is a lot of discussion around how crowded the fintech market is with many new entrants every year, but there is no doubt about the opportunities and gaps to be addressed, particularly in our own backyard.
When asked about white space opportunities, Yield Exchange’s Wu highlighted the “niche, unsexy areas that require deep expertise.”
Across the panel, there was a lot of agreement around pivoting to find niche opportunities to serve underserved markets.
Lastly, it wouldn’t be a full-circle fintech discussion in Canada if we didn’t touch on the open banking issues that have been plaguing this community for years.
“Agentic banking is a very interesting opportunity, but it’s another indictment that we don’t have open banking in this country,” said Andrew Graham. “We need to fix the infrastructure and get the policy right.”
The Payments, Platforms and Progress: What’s Next for Fintech in 2025 Panel was sponsored by Fintech.ca and Category Communications. If you’re interested in sponsoring or partnering on a future event, please contact lauren@categorycomms.com and rob@fintech.ca.
Lauren Arnold is a Co-Founder of Category Communications.
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