Canadian Fintech: Scraping Screen Scraping 🗑️
Manzil enters US. Shopify overhauls fintech products. Goeasy raises.
Morning!
Welcome back to the Canadian Fintech Newsletter, an industry roundup for founders, operators and investors.
Every Monday we break down the hottest topics in the industry in under 3 minutes.
If you missed last week, here’s the TLDR - we launched a VC fund!
The fund is called Exit North Ventures and we’re backing (you guessed it) early stage Canadian fintech. Click here to find out more.
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💰 Funding
Goeasy, a large subprime consumer lender, has reduced their cost of borrowing to sub 6% in a recent US $400m and CAD $150m offering.
As a lender, the lower your cost of capital is the better. And for a non-bank lender, that is super low!
Mogo, a Vancouver based lender and stock trading app, marked down their investment in crypto trading company WonderFi by over 50%.
🤝 M&A
Manzil, a halal finance company acquired Aghaz Investments, a US competitor focused on investments.
A MESSAGE FROM DUUO
Insurance is changing, here's why Canadian brands should know about it
You may not have heard the term “embedded insurance” before, but it’s likely you’ve experienced it.
Embedded insurance refers to any situation where an insurance purchase journey is embedded into a partner’s app, platform, or website. For example, when you’re buying plane tickets and you’re prompted to purchase travel insurance at the same time.
So, why are Canadian brands rushing into the embedded insurance space?
It fulfills a need customers have.
It expands their overall value.
In fact, Duuo by Co-operators’ Embedded Insurance Report shows Canadians have an affinity toward ‘embedded insurance’, with 67% saying they would prefer to purchase auto & home insurance the same way they get insurance for flights.
For Canadian brands looking to grow, this report makes it clear that embedded insurance can benefit those that jump on this opportunity.
Learn more by reading the entire report online today.
🚀 Product
Shopify merged its fintech products (Shopify Balance, Credit, Bill Pay, Capital & Tax) into a single solution called Shopify Finance.
Metro, the grocery giant, has expanded its loyalty program Moi to Ontario.
Earlier this year Metro pulled out of the Air Miles loyalty program following BMO’s purchase of it.
Zafin launched a tool for banks to break down their customers into micro-segments, and offer them personalised rewards.
Sage, a large British accounting platform announced partnerships with Canadian fintechs:
VoPay, a payments company to power Sage’s Payroll clients
Quickly, an invoice financing company for Sage’s construction industry clients
FreshBooks, a Canadian accounting platform integrated with Wagepoint, a payroll software.
Alan, the recently launched health insurance company has selected Vault as their business banking platform.
Square expanded their self-serve kiosks to Canadian quick-service restaurants.
Bamboo, a Nigerian stock trading and remittance app expanded into Canada.
⚖️ Policy
Finance Canada is reportedly eliminating “screen scraping” in its forthcoming legislation on open banking.
Screen scraping is the de facto method for consumers to share their banking information with other parties. It is de facto because Canada has been unable to implement an open banking framework for the last decade, while other markets like the UK have enjoyed it since 2016.
Screen scraping would theoretically be replaced by an “api driven” form of open banking, that Canadian FIs would be forced to participate in.
Alberta introduced legislation that will allow provincially regulated FIs (credit unions and ATB) to offer halal home financing.
The product is getting more attention from regulators. This year’s federal budget also referenced halal financing and explored adjustments to its tax treatment.
I explain what a halal mortgage is here.
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Have a great week! See ya 👋
Would be curious what will happen with credit union accounts' screen scraping. As you know, the proposed open banking rules in Canada would not cover credit unions, and while most are so small that aggregator don't even bother to create a scrapper to get their data, aggregators like Flinks do scrape data from from the big ones like Desjardins, Vancity and Coast Capital.