Baseline Bolsters Payments Toolkit with Acquisition of Fintech Platform MazumaGo

The story of just about every company begins with someone casually asking a question. For Victoria fintech startup MazumaGo, the question was simple: Why is it so hard for businesses to send money?

The fact remains that while consumers have consistently adopted digital payments over the past decade, businesses has lagged behind. Paper cheques have continued to be commonly used for commercial transactions.

MazumaGo took this as a challenge to build for the future by disrupting Canadian B2B payments with a new standard for money transfers. The company’s vision grew out of follow-up questions as to why businesses would want to use cheques—and in response, it developed a simple, secure network for businesses to exchange funds.

CEO Matthew Smith announced this week that his BC startup has been acquired by Vancouver’s Baseline Payments.

“I can finally share with you all that Baseline Payments acquired MazumaGo Canada,” the cofounder stated on LinkedIn.

However, the entrepreneur is not out of the game. Smith’s team has been building a business in the U.S. alongside their Canadian company over the past year.

“After a year of trying to balance both businesses and give each the time and resources needed to grow and improve the product, we have realized that both businesses will benefit from having their own dedicated team,” he explained.

According to Smith, the Canadian financial system “is extremely challenging and restrictive for any new company entering the market,” which impacted his startup’s ability to execute its vision.

“We decided to expand our business into the United States, where the ecosystem for neo-banks and fintech companies is a lot more welcoming and open,” Smith said.

One year later, he went live with an online banking platform offering instant payment processing, bank accounts, physical and virtual cards, and AP automation tools.

Now Baseline is taking over MazumaGo’s Canadian operations, so Smith and his team can focus on the US market.

With Baseline, “we found a sophisticated merchant service provider, based in Vancouver, that was interested in integrating our service into their suite of payment solutions,” Smith said.

Baseline Payments was founded in Vancouver in 2012. MazumaGo was founded in Victoria in 2018.