HOW I MADE FINANCING FASTER FOR BUSINESSES WITH MERCHANT GROWTH

Growing up, I was surrounded by entrepreneurs. My parents immigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union in 1981 and settled in Richmond, B.C., where I was born. My father, brother and uncle each ran their own technology companies. From a young age, I knew I wanted to build a business of my own. 

As a teenager, I explored a few entrepreneurial ventures. I started a rock band with my friends—we printed T-shirts, made albums, and sold tickets for shows. Later, I tried importing electronics from China and selling them on eBay.

After high school, I attended the University of British Columbia’s business school, where I participated in an extracurricular program called the Portfolio Management Foundation from 2007 to 2009. The program gave a small group of students hands-on experience managing a real money portfolio, researching investment ideas and presenting performance to a client committee. It ultimately helped me secure a private equity job in Vancouver upon graduation. 

While in that role, I became intrigued by a business model that was taking off in the U.S. but  still emerging in Canada: non-bank small business lending. Companies like RapidAdvance, AdvanceMe and Merchant Cash & Capital were leading the American market. But there was a clear gap in Canada’s business financing landscape. Small businesses had been struggling for around two decades to access credit from traditional financial institutions as banks and credit  unions sought to  tighten  their lending criteria.

Under an increasingly cookie-cutter system, many businesses were being left behind. It was 2009, just after the financial crisis, and I realized that the lack of credit flowing to small businesses was only going to worsen. At the same time, new laws were about to make it even harder for banks to lend. I saw no reason why the Canadian market couldn’t eventually catch up to the U.S. That’s where the idea for my fintech company, Merchant Growth, came from. 

The goal was to help small businesses access financing more quickly than through the slow, traditional bank loan process. Since my private equity job was demanding, I worked on building the business during evenings and weekends. I wrote a business plan, sought feedback from several people, and incorporated the company that year. What I liked about the business model was that it wasn’t “go big or go home”—it was already proven, didn’t require a huge network, and allowed me to grow  one loan at a time. I was 22, starting from my Vancouver apartment, but I felt confident I had a decent chance of success if I took it step by step. 

In March 2010, six months after writing the business plan, my co-founder and I issued our first loan. A friend in Calgary had a landlord with a retail furniture store, and with our help, he made a bigger inventory purchase (my co-founder, whom I later bought out, put the money up). That fall, I left my job to focus on Merchant Growth full-time. For the first 18 months, I didn’t take any money out of the business, instead  doing hourly consulting on the side to pay the bills. It was scary–while my classmates were making good money on Bay Street or Wall Street, I was taking a huge risk. 

In the early days, I took a percentage of a business’s electronic card sales as repayment. I ran around downtown bank branches, moving bank drafts around. I was always looking for small businesses in need of credit, and investors who could help meet  that need. To find clients, I posted ads online and took countless sales calls, particularly from retail and food-service businesses that couldn’t access bank financing. To secure investors, I met people for coffee and tried to convince them to write a cheque. By November 2010, we brought our first investors on board and issued our second loan. In 2011, brokers began sending us customers, and I hired my first employee, Alex Suto, who’s  still with the company today as our Executive VP of Operations. The following year, a business partner joined us, helping to bring in more investors. 

Once I had built a track record, I could show investors the potential returns of our strategy, and those with deeper pockets began contributing more capital. From there, I expanded our team. An intern from Germany developed a risk-scoring model, which allowed us to offer loan amounts and term rates much more quickly than a bank could. We’ve continued to refine our process, and today, it’s fully automated. 

We’ve always aimed to stay steady. Some similar companies in Canada and the U.S. pivoted away from small-business financing during COVID when government programs reduced lending and our volume dropped. We used that time to invest in our systems and raised $4.1 million in funding, which helped us through the slow period. The capital also allowed us to launch a new product, Tabit, which gives small businesses the buying power to make larger purchases through a buy-now-pay-later agreement with distributors.

In 2023, we recognized a unique opportunity. The Canadian government was offering interest-free loans of up to $60,000 to small businesses through the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA), designed to help owners with expenses like rent and payroll during pandemic-related shutdowns. Businesses that repaid their loans by January 2024 would only owe $40,000–roughly the size of  Merchant Growth’s average loan  (Our loans range from $5,000 to $800,000.)

We spent a year building a custom process to help  small businesses  refinance their CEBA and promoted  it across TV and radio. From November 2023 to January 2024, we doubled our loan portfolio–and that January, we lent up to six times more than we ever have in a single month, cementing our position as a leader in our category. From 2022 to 2025, our financings grew 209 per cent, and our  revenue 256 per cent

The largest factor that helped us stand out is our focus on convenience and accessibility. To access a bank loan, business owners must schedule appointments, provide collateral, and navigate the bureaucratic commercial banking process. IBanks may offer a substantial line of credit to those with enough equity—but for others, the best option might be a credit card with a $10,000 limit.

Merchant Growth, by contrast, evaluates whether the business is viable and generating cash flow. To secure a loan, business owners fill out an application, connect their bank transaction data, and allow  us to evaluate their credit before receiving an offer almost immediately, with a salesperson ready to guide them through the process. 

One of our biggest success stories is Fresh Prep, a Vancouver-based meal prep company. We began working with them early, supporting  their rapid growth with nearly 20 loans, which helped them buy machines to automate their manual work. Eventually, they grew large enough to access capital from banks directly. Today, the company employs over 600 people and is worth $100 million. 

Related: Wealthsimple Co-Founder and CEO Michael Katchen on Simplifying Finance Services

In the long term, I hope Merchant Growth becomes a household name for small-business financing in Canada. We’re looking to expand how we support business owners by building a mobile app for customers and partners, and leveraging AI to handle customer communications and help underwriters review businesses more efficiently. 

Running a small business is never easy. Owners compete against giant companies with huge resources in an ever-changing environment. They  fight the good fight–and they deserve credit for that. 

–As told to Jadine Ngan

2026-03-10T14:38:41Z