Insights with Payments+Partnerships

The fintech landscape in Atlantic Canada is vibrant, innovative, and ripe with opportunity. At Atlantic Fintech, our mission is to help fintechs and those serving financial institutions grow, succeed, and export their solutions to international markets. During our recent “Scaling Smarter” webinar, Nancy Sullivan and Darryl Silva from Payments+ Partnerships and Nim Balachandran from CloudTax shared actionable insights on how fintechs can aggregate offerings, scale efficiently, and form successful partnerships with banks.

Understanding Embedded Finance and the Fintech Opportunity

Fintech is a broad term covering any technology that innovates or streamlines financial services – spanning digital banking, payments, lending, insurance, tax, compliance, and more. Embedded finance, a powerful subset, integrates financial services directly into platforms where users already spend their time, creating seamless experiences and unlocking new revenue streams.

Canada’s financial landscape offers significant opportunity:

Over 400 regulated financial institutions (including 32 banks and more than 300 credit unions).
Over 3,000 fintechs operating nationwide, with 800 focused on payments, 300 on lending, and hundreds more in insurance, wealth, crypto, and blockchain.

This ecosystem creates fertile ground for collaboration, as financial institutions seek innovative partners to solve legacy challenges and accelerate digital transformation.

Aggregating Offerings: Building Value Through Integration

Successful fintechs increasingly aggregate multiple offerings – combining payments, lending, compliance, and other services – to deliver holistic solutions. This approach not only addresses broader customer needs but also strengthens the value proposition when pitching to banks and credit unions. For example, embedded finance allows fintechs to “go where the customers are,” integrating into existing platforms rather than relying solely on direct-to-consumer strategies.

Scaling Smarter: Leveraging Relationships and Market Insights

Scaling in fintech is not just about growth – it’s about smart growth. Key strategies include:

Understanding the partnership lifecycle: from initial formation to formal agreements and, eventually, program management and potential exit or entrenchment.
Targeting the right partners: with hundreds of banks and credit unions in Canada, fintechs should research which institutions are most open to innovation and partnership.
Leveraging existing customer ecosystems: B2B2C and B2B2B models allow fintechs to scale by tapping into the established customer bases of financial institutions, rather than building audiences from scratch.

Partnering with Banks: Best Practices for Fintechs

Banks and credit unions are actively seeking fintech partners to help modernize their offerings. To stand out and succeed, fintechs should:

Demonstrate regulatory readiness: banks prioritize partners with strong compliance, risk management, and governance frameworks.
Showcase proven solutions: highlight real-world results and customer impact, as illustrated by CloudTax’s journey supporting tens of thousands of Canadians.
Be prepared for due diligence: expect thorough vetting of your technology, security, and business model.
Build relationships, not just transactions: think of partnerships as long-term engagements – much like a successful marriage, they require trust, alignment, and ongoing collaboration.
Establish credibility by leveraging Strategic Advisors who have successfully partnered with banks and credit unions. Payments & Partnerships’ BRDG Program, for example, can help FinTechs accelerate partnerships and profitable programs through a proven selection, evaluation and GTM process.

The Bottom Line: Atlantic Canada’s Fintech Advantage

Atlantic Canada is recognized for its innovation, talent, and collaborative spirit. Our region’s fintechs are not only solving Canadian challenges but also making a mark globally. By aggregating offerings, scaling strategically, and forging strong bank partnerships, fintechs can unlock significant growth – tapping into a Canadian embedded finance market projected to reach $13 billion by 2029, with a 25% annual growth rate.

If you’re a fintech in Atlantic Canada, Atlantic Fintech is here to support your journey. Reach out to us for guidance, connections, and to join a thriving community driving the future of financial services.

Want a deeper dive? Watch the webinar recording with Atlantic Fintech, Payments+Partnerships and CloudTax here.

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Payments+Partnerships is a boutique consulting firm specializing in supporting financial institutions, fintechs, merchants, and SaaS providers across the payments ecosystem. The firm offers expertise in payment program development and management, payment acceptance solutions, embedded finance partnerships, and strategic advisory services. Renowned for their deep industry knowledge and collaborative approach, Payments+Partnerships helps clients drive value creation through innovative partnerships and data-driven strategies.

Scaling Smarter: Successfully Partnering with Banks

The Diverse and Expansive World of Fintech