Toronto has long been the financial capital of Canada, and with the help of MaRS and the city's fintech startups it may soon become the country's financial technology capital as well.
Last Tuesday, MaRS announced the launch of a new fintech cluster as well as a series of strategic partnerships with major financial institutions like PayPal, UGO and Moneris Solutions. The initiative, which is being led by Adam Nanjee, the former vice president of business development in emerging payments at MasterCard Canada, aims to create a place where the country's fintech startups, financial institutions and venture capitalists can meet, collaborate and innovate on new technologies.
“Over the past year or so we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of entrepreneurs from coast to coast, but particularly in Toronto, building technologies that solve financial sector problems,” says Nanjee. “The purpose of this cluster is to be a bridge for those entrepreneurs, as well as for financial institutions and for the Canadian and international venture capital community.”
PayPal, which is one of the main partners in the cluster, will lend its support to the effort by bringing its 2015
BattleHack hackathon to MaRS in July, and by hosting a segment of its
Commerce Factory meet ups in Toronto.
Although MaRS only launched the initiative last week, Nanjee expects the country's major financial institutions to take notice quickly. “I think we're going to see more momentum from traditional financial institutions,” says Nanjee. “We're going to start to see a real thirst for innovation and entrepreneurship from the Canadian banks and credit card companies, as well as from even more traditional financial institutions like insurance companies.”
Startups can register for the program at
www.marsdd.com/fintech.
Source: MaRS
Photo courtesy of MaRS Discovery District.