Silicon Valley Fintech Excited About Potential North of the Border

Earlier this year, California-based Synctera has raised capital to power expansion North of the border.

The Silicon Valley banking-a-a-service startup announced a $15 million strategic investment led by NAventures, the corporate venture arm of National Bank of Canada, in March.

Launched in 2020, Synctera helps companies acquire customers, deepen customer relationships, and access new revenue streams by launching innovative banking products. The fintech’s end-to-end platform enables companies to build and launch fintech apps and embedded banking products fast and at lower cost compared to building in-house or with multiple vendors and partners, according to a statement from the firm.

With the platform’s first Canadian customer going live in the next few weeks, the company believes it is entering the market at a time of high demand for innovation in financial products.

“It feels great to officially be doing business in Canada and to be facilitating the cross pollination of US-Canadian financial services capabilities,” stated Canadian Cofounder Kris Hansen, who serves as chief technology officer of Synctera.

Lisa Durnford, who functions as Head of Compliance for Synctera in Canada, believes Canadians deserve more competition in financial products,

“Synctera is well positioned to accelerate our clients’ abilities to build and launch within our evolving regulatory landscape, and to help banks support new entrants and new products in a compliant and reliable way,” she stated.

“What I’m really excited about for the Canadian market is what I’ve experienced in the US market,” Hansen continued. “Seeing what people build with our building blocks and how they take our capabilities and use them to solve real problems that they see in Canada.”

Fellow cofounder Peter Hazlehurst says their company is actively hiring North of the border as the Canadian team—roughly a dozen strong at the moment—seeks to expand.

“Taking what we’ve built for the US to Canada is a big deal for us,” the chief executive officer stated, “and we’ll be hiring quite a few roles that are going to be focused on the new market, so keep an eye out for those jobs on our careers page.”