bcbusiness.ca october 2016 BCBusiness 49
W
ith a little more
forethought,
Matias Marquez
might never have
founded Buyatab.
Marquez was a
21-year-old
SFU student in
2008 when he ran into a
problem: he needed to send
a gift card to someone whose
birthday was that day. It was
too late to send one by mail,
and no online cards or time
machine were to be found.
So Marquez did what great
inventors and entrepreneurs
have done since the begin-
ning of time—he created the
solution himself.
Marquez didn't plan far
enough ahead to send that
card on time, but he's doing
plenty of thinking ahead
now. Most of the gift-card
industry still revolves around
coloured sheets of plastic,
but Buyatab is charging into
the digital landscape of the
future. Electronic commerce
is rapidly shifting toward
mobile technolo‹y, and
Buyatab is helping retailers
Matias Marquez
Founder and COO, buyatab Online Inc.
get ahead of the trend.
The company already
counts hundreds of big-name
brands across the continent
among its clients, including
Whole Foods Market Inc.,
Four Seasons Hotels and
Resorts, Cineplex Enter-
tainment and Tim Hortons
Inc. Buyatab custom-builds
gift-card tools for merchants,
allowing their customers to
buy, send and redeem cards
on both desktop and mobile
devices, through email,
mobile messaging, social
media platforms and
wallet apps like Apple Inc.'s
Passbook. The product
list keeps expanding as tech-
nolo‹y advances, with the
company also providing
security and data-manage-
ment services for its cards.
Buyatab is seeing so much
demand that Marquez (a
2016 BCBusiness 30 Under 30
winner) cites growth man-
agement as the company's
biggest challenge. He wants
the business to continue
expanding but in a way that
maintains the company's
culture. Finding qualied
developers in Vancouver to
add to its 40 employees can
be a struggle too. "It's an
exciting challenge," Marquez
says, acknowledging that
managing growth is a far bet-
ter problem to have than not
growing at all. —D.H.
