It was our pleasure to catch up with Cato Pastoll, founder of Loop, which allows businesses across Canada to save time and money with global credit cards, accounts and more.

1. Can you give us an overview of your background and how you started Loop?

I grew up in a small business family, watching my parents and many relatives work tirelessly to build businesses. Through many of my childhood years, I spent time working in these family businesses, building a modest appreciation for the work that is required to be an entrepreneur.

As my career developed, I took interest in the financial services space as I developed an understanding of how big of an impact these providers have on the small business community as well as the economy more broadly which lead me to building Loop.

At Loop, we embarked on a journey to create better financial services solutions for businesses - on a quest to address some of the major pain points companies face as they grow. Through dialogue with thousands of companies, our team started to develop an understanding of the significant gap in the market that existed when it came to banking solutions for businesses seeking to grow globally.

Large enterprise businesses (i.e Fortune 1000), have made substantial investments in bespoke solutions to build sophisticated internal systems for managing complex financial operations – most notably the banking, money management, and treasury functionalities for cross-border operations. This sophistication remains largely inaccessible to businesses outside the mega-corporate category, leaving them with inefficient ways to manage their global financial operations.

Smaller businesses face significant obstacles to managing their finances across different countries, dealing with various currencies, and navigating complex foreign exchange processes. This realization fueled our determination to create a solution for businesses to seamlessly manage money around the world - enabling them to access more markets, save money and simplify their operations. When businesses adopt Loop, they realize immediate ROI with time and money savings when doing business internationally.

2. What is your favorite thing about the FinTech ecosystem right now?

I’ve been part of building businesses in “FinTech” from before that term was commonly used! What has always excited me is that the status quo has not evolved much over the past 100 years, presenting immense opportunities for innovation and building better solutions for people and companies. The rapid advancements in technology, coupled with the growing demand for seamless financial solutions, have created an environment where FinTech startups can thrive.

3. What tips can you give to entrepreneurs considering starting a business in finance/FinTech?

Because of the complexity of rules, regulations and infrastructure that underpins existing financial services, the importance of understanding how the existing players in the industry operate is critical to understand. I would strongly recommend building relationships with people who understand the industry and the nuances that are applicable to the specific area you want to build in. With that said, never lose sight of building products and a culture that focuses on solving problems for the end customers rather than only focusing on addressing the needs of the existing stakeholders.

4. What's a great digital tool or hack you've discovered recently?

I want to give a shout out to Superhuman, an email management tool with AI integration, which I started using a few months ago. The feeling I got after using it for a month and realizing how much less stressful managing and replying to emails become, I was kicking myself for not trying it out earlier! More specifically, as someone who’s always managing a lot of incoming communication at the same time, their built in time-management as well as the AI email composition tools are amazing!

5. What FinTech startups are you personally excited about right now?

I’m biased but I’m a big fan of the consumer financial services apps that are also making it easier to manage cross-border money movement. From the outside, it might be peculiar that businesses have solved the international use case for consumers before it’s been solved for businesses but we’ve learned as we’ve gone deeper into the space about the significant additional complexity that comes with building these products for companies.

More generally, I’m hoping that with open banking (also called consumer directed banking) becoming adopted internationally, it will greatly improve the user experience for all fintech apps out there as currently needing to log into different platforms for visibility on information is a big point of friction.

6. What can we expect to see coming out of Loop in the near future?

We can’t reveal all of our secrets! But with our mission being to enable businesses to access more markets, save money and simplify their operations - you can expect that there will be many more exciting new offerings coming very soon. We want to support more countries, enable our customers to leverage more payment methods and create best-in-class experiences for business owners.

Our objective as we build new solutions is to solve problems but also flip the pain of using financial services on its head - creating delightful experiences for our customers!