44 BCBusiness OCTOBER 2015
L
isa Shields has slept on
airport benches, "own to
fruitless meetings with
investors and struggled
to pay the sta of her
bootstrapped business. But
those hardscrabble days are
over for Hyperwallet Systems
Inc., the 15-year-old ¡nan-
cial technolo«y company
she founded and built from
scratch. Having survived the
tech meltdown of 1999¯2001
and an ill-fated foray into the
consumer market, Hyperwal-
let has gained traction in the
under-served business-to-
consumer services arena. In
the past three years alone, the
250-employee company has
seen average annual growth
of 90 per cent.
Hyperwallet specializes
in technolo«y that allows
organizations to cheaply and
e"ciently send payments to
people across borders and in
dierent currencies. If you're
an American university try-
ing to pay sta at a satellite
campus in Qatar or a British
miner looking to pay tempo-
rary contractors in Brazil,
Hyperwallet's technolo«y lets
you use a single platform to
deposit money internation-
ally into recipients' bank
accounts, send money online
or load a real or virtual pre-
paid card.
The company's ¡rst
key innovation was creat-
ing a system that bypassed
traditional international
clearing networks that can
cost $15 to $30 per transac-
tion. "If you're an employee,
your payment is done by
direct deposit on a Canadian
network," Shields explains.
"And the cost for your payroll
provider is maybe 10 cents."
There are similar local net-
works that conduct similarly
cheap transfers in countries
throughout the world; Hyper-
wallet's technolo«y con-
nects these local networks.
It costs the company about
$1 to make an international
payment, so it can oer this
service to its customers for
about $3 per payment instead
of $30. Today, Hyperwallet's
hundreds of customers col-
lectively pay millions of users
through a network that spans
more than 170 countries. Its
rapid growth has drawn the
attention of private equity
investor Primus Capital,
which last year bought a
stake in the company.
Shields still holds a seven
per cent stake but stepped
down as
CEO in March 2015
to become a director. She's
proud of what her hard work
built but happy to hand the
reins to new
CEO Brent
Warrington. "Looking back
on it, those were the best
years of my life. But I wouldn't
want to do it again." —Dee Hon
E O Y
I n n o v a t i v e T e c h n o l o g y + F i n a n c i a l S e r v i c e s
winner
2015
"Lisa has demonstrated
vision, understanding
ˆnancial needs and
has put together a
solid team to make
her dreams come true"
T H E J U D G E S S A Y
W I N N E R
L I S A S H I E L D S
[ F OUNDER, H YPERWALLET SYSTE M S INC. ]
