Calgary startup Fillip wins first $250K DCBank fintech award

Alice Reimer, CEO of Calgary-based startup Fillip said their big fintech gains will fund growth.

“Growth. Growth, growth, growth, growth, growth,” Reimer told a packed pitch stage at the Digital Commerce Bank Calgary Fintech Awards held at Platform Calgary on Friday night, when asked what $250,000 would mean to their company.

It was the first prize in the DC Bank Fintech Award, the largest non-dilutive cash prize of its kind in North America. A total of $310,000 was awarded at the event, with second place ($60,000) going to Canadian fintech startup, Miq.

Fillip is a small business-focused digital wallet app that turns a smartphone into a gas card. They target smaller companies with between five and 25 vehicles in their fleet.

“It’s an untapped potential,” Reimer told LiveWire Calgary after winning the award.

“Right now the market we serve, the small business market, is completely underserved and overlooked by traditional fleet cards and traditional fleet dealers.”

This cash infusion will help fund the infrastructure needed to take on more fleet customers and continue their expansion.

Fillip was one of five companies that made their final pitch on Friday night. They joined Miq, Credit App, PayShepherd and YRPlans – Smart Benefit, and each had two minutes to make a final impression on the judging panel.

That group was reduced from a final 11, which was reduced from 24. Initially, 46 applications survived the initial selection process.

Calgary a new fintech star

The award is sponsored by Digital Commerce Bank Calgary. Their co-founder and CEO, Jeffrey Smith, talked about their humble beginnings as a Calgary fintech startup 25 years ago.

He said he and his co-founder would fight over who got the desk chair and who got the side chair in their office on 7 Avenue in downtown Calgary. They stuck with it and went from one ATM to 25,000 in five countries, with 425 employees and $100 million in annual revenue.

They sold in 2017.

Smith said he saw an unmet need to help fintech startups in Calgary.

“We think it’s been an amazing opportunity to meet startups in the same room that we were in,” Smith said.

“25 years or so ago this was not an option. 25 years ago, there was probably no one I knew who wasn’t in the oil business.”

Platform Calgary CEO Terry Rock said Calgary is an emerging technology leader. They have been recognized as such in recent research.

“You’re in a place that has a long history and a wonderful future,” Rock said.

What does the second place offer? Runway, Miq founder said

Jonah Chininga moved to Calgary two weeks ago. They founded Miq in Prince Edward Island, but he said they wanted to ride the momentum of Calgary’s explosive tech scene.

“We saw the opportunity to leverage the ecosystem and be part of the Calgary community,” Chininga said.

He also joked that it helped that when he bought furniture, they only had to pay five percent GST.

Miq is building a community banking platform, focused on newcomers to Canada, that allows them to build credit histories, access credit and funds. Chininga said when many newcomers arrive in Canada, they are “credit invisible” because there is no credit history from their country of origin.

Many banks see it as high risk, he said.

“We want to be the option for (newcomers) to solve that problem and enable them to have financial security,” Chininga said.

And what does the second prize of $60.00 mean to your company?

“It’s more runway,” he said.

“There are several things we can do for customers. And there is also just great credibility for what we do. I think it’s difficult to be a founder, and then it means a lot to us to get the community behind us.”