On March 4th, This Week in Fintech hosted their debut event in Canada, bringing together 150+ people across the tech ecosystem for an evening of networking, panels from local leaders, and even a magician working the crowd.

We had nearly 500 people register, showing the enthusiasm and depth of the Toronto tech ecosystem.

We don’t know how it took us this long to get to Canada, but we’re glad we did. This will be the first of many…

Headlining the event was a live podcast with Adyen’s Head of Canada, Sander Meijers, and Notch CEO Jordan Huck.

Sander, Jordan, and I discussed their rich product offerings for Canadian businesses, how Adyen’s platform has provided Notch with unique structural advantages, how each leader balances local and global perspectives when scaling teams, and more.

🎧 Live from Toronto: Adyen’s Head of Canada Sander Meijers and Notch’s CEO Jordan Huck on Building for Canadian Businesses

Podcast Episode · This Week in Fintech’s Podcast · 03/14/2025 · 18m

Apple Podcasts

Adyen is a global financial technology platform helping the world’s leading businesses achieve their ambitions faster. Since its founding in 2006, Adyen has built one of the world's leading platforms to help enterprises accept payments, protect revenue, and control their finances. Adyen processed ~$1Tn in transaction volume last year across for companies like Microsoft, McDonalds, Uber, Loreal, Spotify, eBay, Gap and more.

Notch is an accounts receivable automation software, designed to simplify managing invoices and payment collection. With Notch you can automate the entire AR process from invoice creation to payment processing speeding up payment collection (up to 3x faster) and improving cash flow.

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor at OMERS Ventures, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area.

You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ryan Zauk: The views expressed in this podcast are the speaker's own and are not the views of this week, FinTech or any other person or entity. The content provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, business tax, or investment advice or recommendation, solicitation endorsement, or offering by me or anyone else for the sale subscription or purchase of securities, or for investment advisory services of any kind.

Hello everyone and welcome to today's special edition of the This Month in FinTech podcast. Recorded live in Toronto on March 4th, this week in FinTech, had their debut event in Canada bringing together hundreds of people across the tech ecosystem for an evening of networking, food and drinks, panels from local leaders and even a magician working the crowd.

We had nearly 500 people register when it was all said and done, showing the enthusiasm and depth of. The Toronto Tech ecosystem. We don't know how it took us this long to get to Canada, but we're glad we did. This will be the first of many. This episode is a recorded version of our live headline panel featuring Ian's head of Canada, Sander Meijers, and Notch CEO Jordan Huck.

In this panel, Sander and Jordan discuss their rich product offerings for Canadian businesses. How Adios platform has provided notch with unique structural advantages. How each leader balances local and global perspectives when scaling teams and much more. Let's get started. So welcome everyone to this weekend Fintech's debut event in Canada.

We couldn't be more excited to join you all for the first time in what will be first of many opportunities to bring together this great Canadian ecosystem. As we mentioned, we had nearly 450 plus people register, which is a testament to the size and energy of the community here, and honestly, it puts the San Francisco events that we run to shame.

This is awesome.

So. Alright, let's, uh, now let's jump in. Let's get to the good stuff. So pleasure to be joined on stage, as I mentioned by Sander Meijers, head of Canada for Adyen and Jordan Huck, founder and CEO of Notch. So gentlemen, why don't we start with a very quick intro each on who you are and what exactly your company does.

Jordan, start with you.

[00:02:10] Jordan Huck (Notch): Hi everyone. Thanks so much for having me today on Tariff Day as well. So, wow, we're all dealing, uh, especially our, our venture capitalists in the room. They're like, what does this mean for everything? Um, so my name's Jordan Huck, I'm founder and CEO at Notch Financial. So we build accounts receivable automation software for B2B merchants to help reduce the amount of time it takes for them to collect money.

So my friends from Adyen wanted me to shout out our distillery customers, which I, I will. So you're gonna drink Ace Hill tonight. You're gonna drink Amsterdam Brewery like very simply. It's always a simple use case. The way they collect money, there are these painful offline workflows for them to connect.

Uh. Money and, and we automate that process for them. And, uh, embedded payments as well. So, we'll, we'll talk about that in a second.

[00:02:57] Sander Meijers (Adyen): Thanks. I can actually make my intro much shorter because of your explanation. So I'm Sandra Myers. I lead the, uh, Canadian office for Agen. Agen is a global financial technology, uh, company that processes payments across the world.

27 offices, one of them here, right here in Toronto. So thanks everyone for coming. It's proud to see this, uh, this community and you guys for taking up us up on this while. Jordan and his uh, team makes payments easier to do. We power all that in the background, so whether it's in store, whether it's on a platform through notch, or where you go into a Arteric store or you book a flight on Air Canada, we do the hard stuff in the back so they can make it easy for customers like Amsterdam Brewery and a Hill, et cetera.

That's a short intro. Shout out to those guys. Yeah,

[00:03:42] Ryan Zauk: we're really hammering the booze here. All right, love it for our other customers. Uh, let's hope so. So Sonder, let's start with you. Aian launched its Canadian office in 2018, and then a few years ago you actually relocated yourself to Toronto to really commit to the Canadian ecosystem and opportunity full time.

What brought you and Aian here? How do you think Aian can help accelerate growth and make commerce easier in Canada?

[00:04:05] Sander Meijers (Adyen): We were actually processing payments since 2012 in Canada. We had, uh, we had our big global merchants that needed us to process their payments in Canada. So that was the first reason why Agen started an office here.

And once you're here in Canada, you figure out that interact and a couple of people are here from interact is a very specific thing. So to really understand what that means, you need people on the ground. And then you figure out once you're here, like working with these global companies, that there's actually.

Huge opportunity in the Canadian companies. Like there's a so many Canadian company companies and not just a great example, but like even in retail or in uh, other segments in digital segments, there's a very big ambition for Canadians to go outside of Canada. And our unified one technology tech stack is actually perfect for that.

So, uh, a lot of Canadian businesses don't only think about Canada, maybe now more so, uh, today, again, like a little punt, but, um. I think a lot of the growth goes outside of Canada, so we can power that and we have an ideal platform for that, but also only in Canada. I think there's a lot of growth to be happen.

We can optimize the infrastructures that are sometimes quite old and we bring in a very, I. Unique and innovative platform that solves a lot of the, let's say, legacy when it comes to reconciliation, when it comes to, uh, fraud, uh, management, when it comes to all the difficult and complex things in payments, I think we, we can solve for that and the Canadian market is ready for that.

[00:05:34] Ryan Zauk: Great. And then maybe to make that come alive a little bit and. Turning to you, Jordan, what specifically has Aian helped you with? And let's maybe take your, your business pre and now, you know, not post Aian, but during Aian.

[00:05:45] Jordan Huck (Notch): Sure. Well, we didn't set out to be a payments company right at our core. We're a software company, we, we hear a painful use case that we can make more efficient, actually multiple, right?

So the way our merchants would, would process card not present transactions with acquirers. One of them might be in the room right now, legacy acquirers or, uh, you know, set up their preauthorized debit sort of management infrastructure, the way they would do those things. Um. Was very painful. So, so we set out to solve those workflows, and then we had a decision to make, there were two approaches we could take the middleware approach where we just integrate into the Riss and the Fiserv and all of the, the, the acquirers and hope that our merchants use those acquirers.

And then that would, that would update our software or we can embed payments. Right from the start, and as soon as you go down that decision tree to embed payments, you have another decision tree. So in Canada, am I gonna get the money transmission license? Am I gonna set up my virtual ledger to to make those payouts?

Am I going to act as the clearinghouse? Am I gonna do a direct bank integration? I mean, the team from float here, here today, they could be giving this talk on those things, but. So we had that decision tree to, to go through and we decided to go with Aian for, for platforms because it solved so many of those use cases for us extremely efficiently.

Right? So, you know, we're fully white labeled with Aian. I mark up the buy rate. That I get from my friend Sander. Thank you, sir. Right. I want the most competitive economics I can get. I have a sell rate to my merchants and then they do all of my ledgering, all of my payouts. And so now we still have had to build quite a bit of KYB infrastructure, but nowhere near what I would've had to do if I'd directly taken on that journey.

And then final point here, and I'm not just saying this for Sander, my economics are competitive enough that I'm not looking for a new bank integration. I'm like. I'm not supposed to say that, right. The the economics are great, Rory. They're, they're fair for adian, they're fair for notch. So we appreciate that.

They're fair.

[00:07:51] Sander Meijers (Adyen): Thank you. That's right. Thank you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna need to stop you there. I think, um, I think it's a win-win for Adyen too because, uh, companies like notch, like Adian, like platforms as we call them, they're going after the small medium business and solving really hard financial issues.

For small, medium businesses that have been truly underserved, not only in Canada, but also in other pieces of the world. But we're talking about Canada here and like, if you can solve that side, that's not what we know to do. We don't solve all these issues that they automate for notch. We are very good at payments and that's why we're, it's a win-win.

We can grow our payments, uh, space by working with platforms like Notch and other ones, and they are don't have, and they can go faster and solve more. Problems because they don't have to think about the complexities of fame. And so a win-win. And then

[00:08:36] Ryan Zauk: Jordan, you mentioned a lot of decision trees that you kind of went through there as a founder.

There's a lot of founders, operators, early stage builders, investors in the room that have to make that decision or probably will be this year. How did you think about that build by partner with any frameworks you applied or how you ran your RFPs and and strategy there?

[00:08:53] Jordan Huck (Notch): So good question. We don't run RFPs at notch, uh,

[00:08:58] Ryan Zauk: for some of the legacy, and we wouldn't know

[00:08:59] Jordan Huck (Notch): how to run an RFP at notch, but we, what I did, so I don't come from a financial technology background, you humble yourself enough to go out and get great people.

And there's a lot of, you know, my, my colleague who runs money movements got 10 years at RIS and you know, 10 years at Citibank. And so we really understood the trade offs from an economics perspective. And there are companies that make different decisions. They decide to. Go for the bank integration right away.

And that made sense for them. For us and our money movement flow, we wanted a platform money movement flow where we don't actually act as the merchant of record, right? Where funds are being moved by our, so it's a marketplace flow or platform flow. And so. I'll leave their competitor unnamed, but there's not many platforms that operate in that space.

So the list was short once we went down that, and then, uh, I really like the Adyen team. They didn't, they didn't just ping me to say that they're here in Canada. They're three blocks away. I. During implementation, I text them relentlessly. Like not, you know, sometimes painfully raring. He does. He does. He does.

I do. What's, oh, like, I'm like, no. Literally though, like I saw them release the Klarna and I'm like, oh my God, what an amazing use case for the payer side of my network. Right. And they're like, oh, we can also. Do lending off our own balance sheet. So exciting partnership. I really like the Idian team.

[00:10:17] Ryan Zauk: Awesome. And then Sonder, you mentioned the team a couple times and he talked about the importance of hiring local experts. You came overseas, AIAN came in, expanded to this market. How did you balance building this office out, bringing in some of your like international homegrown talent from Adyen and then also.

Having to hire great experts that know this ecosystem in and out and can build, you know, for that local color.

[00:10:39] Sander Meijers (Adyen): Yeah. It's a, it is the perfect mix, right? You need somebody who really understands the company because, uh, end of the day we're not building the product in Canada, we're building across, in, across different, like in your tech hub in Chicago, in San Francisco, in Amsterdam, even in India nowadays.

So you have to really know your way around Agen to get things done. So. That helps if you've been around at Agen. So we bring in a couple of experts, a couple of well connected people outside, and then the next piece is how do you connect with the Canadian ecosystem? Well, you can hire great people here.

There's a lot of great talent here. A lot of people want to change. I. Speed up. I hear a lot of that in Canada, like it's time for a fresh take. And so there was a lot of good candidates out there that could compliment our, uh, our global team. And I think we have currently a great mix of 32 payment professionals in our Toronto office that are very eager, eager to solve problems that other companies have not been able to solve for them.

I'm actually

[00:11:34] Ryan Zauk: gonna come back to you again. As you think about solving these problems, and we look at, you know, the big competitive landscape and payments, everyone seems to be taking a different strategy on how they prioritize product roadmap, SMB, mid-market enterprise software, payments, fraud, wherever else.

How do you think about setting the strategy for the company and when you have great up and coming companies like Notch and then big enter giant Enterprise that you serve, how to prioritize your next product?

[00:11:58] Sander Meijers (Adyen): Well, for us it's um. A couple of things that guide us as agen, like we only innovate for all merchants, not for just one.

So that's why we, that's a guiding principle. And another thing is we only work for large enterprises trying to solve hard problems. If you put these two things together, we solve really hard problems for enterprises that every company can then benefit from. So whether we work with Lightspeed. Pretty big company.

Now, Jordan can leverage all the things we built for Lightspeed. There's actually an account manager from Lightspeed in Nanu. She know, she knows how much problems we solve for Lightspeed. We built that for Lightspeed now. Now Noosh can use it as well. So I think the strategy is large enterprises with hard problems, we've been able to solve them by building everything ourselves in in-house, not taking short routes.

And once we solve big problems for large enterprises, the road downstream is pretty easy, but it stops somewhere. Some companies don't need to solve. Heart problems, so then they're not in into agin. And that's okay.

[00:12:53] Ryan Zauk: And then I know we only have a couple minutes left here, so we'll open it up to q and A in just a second.

So if you have any questions, start thinking about 'em and get some courage to please ask it. Uh, and then we'll flip it back to you, Jordan, looking at the outlook for notch over the next five years, what, let's say we run this event back and my God, is it, would that be 2030? I think that would be 2030. Is that five years from now?

Yeah. Uh, so let's. 2028 maybe. Uh, 2028 we run this event back. What do you hope to be telling the audience what you've accomplished? What's ahead? The leaves are champions. Yeah.

[00:13:24] Jordan Huck (Notch): Uh, honestly, I would take being as big as aian that way. I would take that over the leaves. Like if, if our company could be the same size and scale happily, sorry for my leaves, fans.

Um, yeah. So for us in B2B payments. Uh, you're always building this two-sided network, right? So more merchants like Ace Hill, I know I keep coming back to these guys, but they bring restaurants onto the network on the payer side. So for us, it's always been about, um, increasing the attach rate for payments on our merchant side.

Then we have an opportunity to layer in additional products and financial services into the network. So, you know, when our, my friends from Float are here, they've done such a world class job of like, all right, embed the next financial product, right? You're gonna see consolidation in the office of the CFO.

Uh, and so you know, when it's the time to layer in bill pay, 'cause we have this huge network that's just being built. But for us, the ultimate, you know, anybody that's ever invested in in notch, it's always been about getting the opportunity to layer in additional financial services. So, you know, when RBC issues a credit card isn't that nice for RBC, they get to benefit from that interchange revenue on issuing.

Well, why wouldn't notch We're processing almost if you eat food from a restaurant that was paid with wholesale via credit card, I process that credit card. Well, I should be issuing. That credit card. Right? And now there's an opportunity to, to take those economics that get captured by the network and share them back.

So, um, AIAN is a perfect fit for us. They, they, you know, AIAN embedded financial products, Rory, I got that right. Got it. Uh, issuing. Working capital, right? We'll be able to factor receivables on the, which we get requests for like almost every day. Uh, so being able to, to factor receivables on the merchant side and then working capital loans on the payer side.

This is all this view of this B2B payments network we're creating.

[00:15:12] Ryan Zauk: I. Awesome. And then, uh, last same question over to you Sonder Ian, hopefully you're still here in Toronto yourself in a couple years. What are we hoping to hear from you?

[00:15:20] Sander Meijers (Adyen): Agen is definitely gonna be here because you're gonna be paying at the Tim Hortons on the Aen terminal and the Canadian.

Oh, there we go. Like, that's the, that's the ambition, I would say. But on the same side, uh, like we want power. These kind of things that, that, that, that, um, Jordan is talking about like, like our next endeavor. Like we've done it in us, we've done it in Europe. We will be able to do it in Canada, just like matter of time.

So five years from now, we should be talking about embedded finance as opposed to embedded payments.

[00:15:47] Ryan Zauk: Awesome. All right, so we have, uh, time for one audience. Question before bringing Brim on stage. Uh, please raise your hand if you have a question. We'll walk the mic to you

[00:15:55] Speaker 4: so it, it sounds like you're building a B2B payments network.

Curious if there's any, are there any blockers that are, um, on driving adoption for the people paying the invoices?

[00:16:08] Jordan Huck (Notch): That's a great question. There's a tremendous amount of friction for the, for the people paying the invoices. Um. And so the payment mix is split. I know I have to go quickly. So the payment mix is split between card push EFTs and push EFTs are the hardest ones to convert, right?

Because they're used to logging into their bank and pushing an EFT. So we built a. Payer side UI via a customer portal to get a free, and then we look at optimizing that. We know that getting rid of the login will optimize conversion. Right? So it's all about gently. So just to, to give you context, we started at 0% of payment methods were entered on the payer side.

We're now up to 20. I want to get it, like I'm only attaching a certain percentage. I wanna get that number up to 60 70. It's every little optimization on that payer side, but eventually the economics of like, oh, I would log into not just customer portal, if I could get working capital. It's the biggest pain point we solve.

Just trying to get rid of that friction.

[00:17:05] Ryan Zauk: Awesome. Well, with that, we'll wrap up. Sorry. We'll get to questions. Go find them in the audience, please. Uh, they'll be here for the rest of the night. Uh, thank you all. Let's get a round of applause for our guests here. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to today's episode of the This Month in FinTech podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like, follow, subscribe, or rate us across your preferred podcast and social media platforms. Lastly, I'd like to thank our editor Evangel Marco for his great work on our episodes.

Signing off. I'm your host, Ryan Zauk.