Most people would not consider relocating to Calgary to be essential for advancing their career in technology, but for Nicolas ‘Nic’ Beique, it is. He is the founder and CEO of Helcim, a payments startup that makes it simpler, quicker, and less expensive for companies to get paid. He is paving the way for Calgary’s budding IT industry by demonstrating that great startups can be developed and thrive in the city.
A Brief About Nicolas Beique
Beique’s parents announced the family’s relocation from Montreal to Calgary when he was 12 years old. They bribed their two boys to sweeten the bargain: the family would adopt a puppy and acquire a new computer. Both spurred lifetime interests for Beique, who is still a dog owner and the CEO of the fintech firm he founded, owing to the coding skills he learned on that computer.
Apart from being the founder and CEO of Helcim, he was the principal developer on Helcim Commerce, the company’s first software release. He was named to the Avenue Calgary Top 40 Under 40 class of 2019 for his achievements in the payment industry and Calgary’s tech sector as the EY Entrepreneur of the Year, being profiled as Top 40 Under 40 by Avenue Calgary (class of 2019), and Prairies Technology, overall category winner in the year 2018.
What Led Nic Beique to Launch Helcim?
By the time Nic was in high school, he was working as a freelance web designer, creating eCommerce websites for local businesses and noting how difficult it was for them to accept online payments. So, he created Helcim to provide payment solutions that enable small businesses to prosper by merging a payments-first strategy, accessible, user-friendly software, and knowledgeable and valuable customer assistance.
The payments space, according to Nicolas, is generally uninteresting. Still, his ambition was to establish a payments company beloved by his clients and can be the beating core of their prosperity. Nic believes that it’d be sufficient of a differentiator for his company, Helcim, to have developed the brand they are having, based on processing billions of dollars in payments every year with a personal touch. But in a notorious sector for bad practices, he is propelling much farther.
Challenges Faced by Nicolas on the Way and Overcoming It
Helcim was created in 2007 to help fix the problem of small business owners. However, Nic, soon ran into his roadblock: he still needed to collaborate with a mainstream financial establishment. The banks were not quite interested in a transaction with a 23-year old boy.
Beique was undeterred. It took him more than two years, but he eventually signed a contract with a division of US Bank and has since developed Helcim into a Calgary success story. The company has expanded from two to more than 50 workers in the past five years, offering payment infrastructure to over 6,500 businesses across Canada and the United States, processing over $2.5 billion in payments.
With over $48 million in revenue, Nic’s company, Helcim, has competed with much larger companies like Paypal, Square, and Shopify by being ultra-transparent in a market notorious for difficult contracts and hidden costs. Beique has also proven that you don’t have to migrate to Vancouver, Toronto, or San Francisco to operate a successful tech start-up. He believes that Calgary, like Helcim, can punch beyond its weight.
After years of bootstrapping and pivoting two years back, his company has recently secured $16 million in Series A financing. With this new investment, Nic is now preparing Helcim for growth. He will use the funding to create new products for the payments business, and Helcim plans to hire more than 150 people over the next two years, including developers, customer support, and sales. Currently, the startup employs around 115 people. In addition to the funding, Helcim’s board of directors will be joined by Jane Podbelskaya, Information VP Principal and ATG’s Danté La Ruffa.
A Few Lines about Helcim
Helcim’s mission is to become the world’s most beloved payments firm by providing every conceivable advantage for small companies to succeed and benefit communities. With a personal touch, the FinTech company provides a simpler, smarter, and more inexpensive payment experience. Helcim helps thousands of firms in Canada and the United States spanning 800 sectors, processing billions of dollars in payments each year.
Previously, Helcim operated as a reseller, offering three POS (point-of-sale) methods for businesses to receive payments. Helcim, in the year 2020, established its comprehensive payment processing solution. Helcim created a full-stack payment processing solution, including hardware certifications, fraud detection, settlement systems, bank connections, underwriting, and card network access.
For more information regarding Nicolas Beique and Helcim, you can visit their official website www.helcim.com and learn.
