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- He went door to door to build a bank
He went door to door to build a bank
Plus: why Canadian fintech's "76% crash" is a mirage - and Yoseph West live on Monday
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150,000 businesses, $1.5B in deposits, $85M in revenue
Yoseph West ran Facebook ads for a banking product and converted exactly three leads. Not one of them would take his call.
So he went door to door to find customers himself. Knocking on doors in Koreatown, Kensington Market, and a few other pockets of the city, meeting the owners of the bakeries and shops that make up Toronto and asking what actually broke in their financial back office. He heard the same thing over and over: they wanted a big red easy button for their money so they could get back to running the business.
Yoseph had spent a decade close to that problem, having previously worked at Wave and Hubdoc, and kept landing on one fact: every small business owner lives in their bank account. Most small businesses have only about 27 days of cash on hand if revenue stops tomorrow. The difference between the ones that survive and the ones that don’t usually isn’t how much money they’re making, it’s how clearly they can see what’s actually happening.
So he and Paul Klicnik asked the question nobody was building around. What if we solve this for small businesses? That is what they built with Relay. The online banking platform we built to put small business owners in complete control of their cash flow so they can achieve peak profitability. No hidden fees, just a clear picture of what they’re earning, spending, and saving.
Six years on, it serves 150,000 small businesses across America, holds $1.5B in deposits, and does $85M a year in revenue.
It wasn’t a straight line. In 2021 their partner bank fell through and they had to move $225M in customer deposits, a migration people warned would “rain hellfire” on the team. They built a wizard that let owners switch with a checkbox. Revenue went from $1.7M to $5M that year, then $5M to $28M the next.
His advice for anyone building right now is four words: it’s all learning.
If you want to learn more about Yoseph’s journey, join us at Together Toronto on Monday, July 6 to hear his fireside live. Sign up here:
A preview of some of Yoseph’s advice and answers.
My advice would be to imagine what the world will look like in ten years and anchor on what you know to be true - that’s your view of the future. Then everything you build, in your company, your product, your service, is in pursuit of what will be true in ten years. That level of conviction is more rare than we like to admit when people are starting out. Having a real view on where the world is heading, and how your business fits into it, is exceptionally valuable.
What is the secret of building a successful business?
We’ve stayed deeply focused on what customers actually care about, which is cash flow visibility. Faster, more automated, lower fees — yes, that stuff helps, but it’s table stakes for delivering on the vision. The real secret is understanding the customer’s pain point and building a financial solution that genuinely solves it.
Who are the 3 Canadian startups you like in your market?
1. Wealthsimple 2. Float 3. Neo
Who are the two Canadian companies you admire outside your market?
1. Shopify. I admire them as they took an idea most people thought was niche, empowering small merchants, and they built it into a global category.
2. 1Password. Less talked about, but I think they’re one of the best-run product companies in the country. They built something genuinely useful, they bootstrapped for years before taking outside money, and they’ve kept the product feeling like it was made by people who actually use it. That kind of patience and craft is rare, and it’s the kind of company-building I respect most.
POLL Results
75% of you said Canadian founders are too cautious.
Not surprising. What’s telling is that we see it in ourselves and keep doing it anyway.
Here’s the gap: we don’t tell our own stories. Canada has built world beaters, but the bold parts stay off the record. The bet that shouldn’t have worked. The moment a founder ignored safe advice. The companies fly under the radar and the risk behind them goes unspoken, so the next founder never learns that the people they admire took the risk on purpose.
We dig into those moments on TechTO podcasts and at our firesides. It isn’t enough. These stories need to travel to mainstream media and change Canadian culture.
The ambition is already here. The risk appetite is already here. What’s missing is permission, and permission comes from two things: mentorship, and treating the founders who tried and failed as people worth backing again.
That’s a culture change, and it won’t come from a stage. It comes from everyone reading this.
Canadian fintech’s quiet turning point
Funding “cooled” in 2025. The real story is underneath.
The headline said Canadian fintech funding fell from US$9.9B to US$2.4B in 2025, a 76% drop. The headline is wrong. That 2024 number was driven by two megadeals. Here are the five things worth knowing.
1. Funding didn’t fall. It got disciplined.
Total fintech investment was US$2.4B across 113 deals in 2025, down from US$9.9B in 2024. These numbers include two late stage private equity investments. [KPMG]
Early stage venture capital held flat: US$1.2B in both years, just spread across fewer, larger deals (82 vs 120). [KPMG]
Q4 was the strongest quarter for fintech VC since 2021. [KPMG]
Takeaway: The drop is an optical illusion from two 2024 megadeals. Real early-stage capital is steady.
2. The money is chasing AI and crypto.
AI and machine learning was the most-funded subsector, followed by digital assets, which led on deal count for the fourth straight year. [ainvest]
Real examples: Conquest Planning (Winnipeg) raised US$80M for AI financial planning [ainvest]; Ripple bought Rail for US$200M to build out stablecoin payments.
Takeaway: While the amount of financing stays steady, what gets financed will change. The best approach is to ignore the trends and find the best way to solve a real problem.
3. Open banking is finally law.
The Consumer-Driven Banking Act got royal assent in March 2026, with the Bank of Canada as regulator. [DLA Piper]
Roughly nine million Canadians still share their banking passwords with apps through screen-scraping. This framework replaces that with consent-based data sharing. [DLA Piper]
The catch: the Bank of Canada still hasn’t committed to a launch date, and a 2026 go-live is widely seen as at risk. [Open Banking Tracker]
Takeaway: The single biggest structural unlock for challengers is now on the books. But it’s a “build ahead of the rails” moment, not a “it’s live today” one.
4. Real-time payments are almost here.
Payments Canada’s Real-Time Rail, money that settles in seconds, is targeted for later in 2026 (though some analysts expect early 2027). [Payments Canada]
It’s the precondition for open banking Phase 2: payment initiation and account switching.
Takeaway: Open banking moves your data; the Real-Time Rail moves your money. Together they let a new company compete on product instead of partnering around the Big Five.
5. The challengers have already hit real scale.
Wealthsimple: $10B valuation, 3 million customers, $100B in assets. [Wealthsimple newsroom]
KOHO: $1.33B valuation, 2.5 million customers, closing in on a Schedule 1 bank licence. [BetaKit]
Neo: 1 million-plus customers and the first securitization by a Canadian fintech. [BetaKit]
Takeaway: Canadians have roughly six million accounts with a challenger bank. The belief that Canadians will not trust a start-up is no longer an excuse to not build.
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