London Inc. September 2021 - 33

WHAT IS PAYSTONE?
Paystone is a payment processing platform, for
one thing, part of the complicated and unseen architecture
that makes even the most quotidian debit
purchase happen. Paystone is something else, too -
an integrated customer loyalty system that manages
customers, can enrol them in loyalty programs and
extend to them all manner of customer rewards.
It is a company that has found a niche by creating a
platform that exists at the intersection of those two
things, a fintech startup founded a decade ago by
Western dropouts that has grown and grown, slowly
acquiring new components and building new facets
of business, into a firm that in 2021 closed nearly $100
million in investment from some of Canada's biggest
financial institutions.
Paystone is also something else in founder and CEO
Tarique Al-Ansari's mind: a company in waiting, a
game-changing startup that is content enough flying
under the radar until it becomes London's first tech
company to achieve " unicorn " status (a company with
a valuation of US$1 billion or above).
" We can be a global business out of London, Ontario
- and why not? " he says.
That ambition is about more than a dollar figure. It
is about putting London's tech sector on the map - to
do what BlackBerry did for Waterloo's identity as a
tech centre; to do first what Nortel, and later Shopify,
did for Ottawa. They are out, Al-Ansari says, not just
to compete, but " to create a category, " and to pioneer
and lead a new way of doing business.
electronically was, at least by 2021's standards, a bit
of a pain in the neck. Digital payment could still seem
like a bit of a Wild West; Tim Hortons didn't even take
debit until 2010.
" We saw how difficult it was to accept electronic
payments, so we started Zomaron out of a passion to
help other entrepreneurs accept electronic payments
and make the experience more seamless, " Al-Ansari
stated in a 2018 Zomaron media kit.
Over the next decade, the service evolved into a
more sophisticated payment platform. In 2013, the
business was briefly sold to Posera, a payment service
firm that worked with restaurants and retailers,
before the two companies parted ways a few years
later. By 2018, Zomaron was " diving deeper into the
world of financial technology, " having grown their
product from simply payment processing services to
" an omnichannel solution for the profit and non-profit
sectors, " that allowed both businesses and charities
alike to be more flexible with the way they took and
processed payments.
But the move that would most alter the company's
identity came when the company acquired
DataCandy, a Montreal-based firm that had created a
gift card and loyalty program platform. The company
rebranded as Paystone. Their goal was to bring
together payment processing with the increasingly
ubiquitous customer loyalty program idea, creating
what Al-Ansari calls a " proprietary technology called
Payment Integrated Loyalty. "
Their transition from the processing company
Zomaron to the platform company Paystone is the
lynchpin to all this. " I took us eight years to figure
out how to build the platform, " Al-Ansari says.
" Right now, it's the era of platforms. If you can build a
platform, you're able to capture so much growth and
attract so much investment. "
Imagine it like this, he says: You're at a hair salon,
For several years now, London has been home to
strong and growing tech sector, but one without a
BlackBerry or a Spotify to give it a billion-dollar
stamp on its reputation. Al-Ansari's goal is to change
that.
" The excitement, the thrilling party of scaling
and getting there, " he says, " is really in being able to
change the world. "
Paystone's origins go back to 2008, when Al-Ansari
and three co-founders launched Zomaron, reselling
payment processing systems out of Al-Ansari's
basement. It was 2008, and paying for things
one you end up being happy with. Right at the
point of payment - " one of the most valuable touch
points, " Al-Ansari says, " a good capture moment, an
amplification of the interaction " - you can join the
loyalty program offered through the platform.
" It actually allows us to turn a payment customer
into a loyalty member on the [payment] card, so they
don't have to sign up, carry another piece of plastic
or sign into another program, " Al-Ansari explains.
From there, you become a valuable customer to the
business insofar as you can be enticed to spread the
word. A business might want to run a promo, where
an Instagram post or a Google review earns you $5 off
your next purchase. " Next time you come in to buy, we
can apply the $5 right away, and automate all of that
for businesses, " Al-Ansari says.
SEPTEMBER 2021 | londonincmagazine.ca | 33
http://www.londonincmagazine.ca
London Inc. September 2021

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