While small businesses have floundered in the pandemic, CEO Tarique Al-Ansari has worked to help. Moreover, his company Paystone recently closed a $69 million funding round.
“This financing round accelerates Paystone’s vision,” says Al-Ansari. “We are transforming payments acceptance by integrating marketing automation with electronic payments, enabling merchants to grow their revenues.”
Paystone focuses on improving integrated payment processing. In this way, the software allows businesses to keep better track of their ledgers and accounting, and eliminates human error.
Paystone helps small businesses keep track of their finances
Originally founded in 2009 under the name Zomaron, by 2015 the company had hit $1 billion in gross merchant volume. Two years later, they invested in their own proprietary technology. In addition to automatically organizing customer information, Paystone’s technology allows vendors to track loyalty program statistics and easily automate marketing campaigns. All of this comes with fraud prevention built in and no fees, even as the company’s customer base grows.
Paystone officially rebranded in 2019 after acquiring DataCandy, a Montreal-based software firm. Other acquisitions in Canada, including POS West LTD and NXGEN Canada have also increased Paystone’s client base fivefold. The company currently works with over 25,000 merchants all over North America. Some of these retailers include Aldo, Pandora, and Booster Juice, just to name a few.
Tarique Al-Ansari also directs Paystone to “do good”
Al-Ansari describes himself as “a software engineering dropout who is leading a team that built one of Canada’s fastest growing fintechs… A serial entrepreneur and a self-proclaimed deal-maker.”
Before Paystone, Al-Ansari co-founded eMEALStogo, an online food court. He was also a managing partner at Fuzzy Matter. His experience working with restaurant delivery and seeing small business owners struggling to organize their finances inspired him to establish Zomaron/Paystone.
In addition to finances, Al-Ansari has developed ways in which Paystone can help charities. In 2017, he ran a pilot project with “mainly mosques and churches and a couple of hospitals,” he tells London Inc Magazine. The organizations reported a 50-100% increase in donations, the magazine reports. They note that the opportunity to donate without a card made it infinitely more convenient for many.
Now, Paystone runs “a full suite” of donation kiosks all over various locations in Canada. These help streamline the financial regulation aspect of the donation and make it easier for the charity to receive the funds as soon as possible. “One of our core values is to do social good,” Al-Ansari explains.
Tarique Al-Ansari secures new funding for growth
Their latest round of financing resulted in $69 million of strategic financing from the Canadian business Growth Fund and the National Bank of Canada. It finished in the beginning of 2021.
“Paystone’s long-term vision and strategy are aligned with our desire to support aspiring entrepreneurs building the next generation of strong Canadian technology companies,” says Matt Macdonald, Managing Director and Head of National Client Group at National Bank of Canada. “We’re delighted to empower Paystone’s growth plans, which support Tarique’s passion and his team’s mission to build a powerful software solution suite for merchants of all sizes.”
Recently, the pandemic has shown how important electronic payment technology is. “This funding round is a significant milestone and will be transformational for Paystone,” Al-Ansari tells Business Wire. “We are very proud to have the support and partnership of CBGF and National Bank as we scale into the next phase of growth and opportunity.”
Learn more about Paystone’s services on their official website.
