HELCIM A LEADER IN PAYMENTS TECHNOLOGY
Company aims to multiply customer base by 10 within the next three years
We talk a lot about the need for growth in our high-tech industries and rebranding the city as a technology hub, but there are a number of startup firms that have already made their mark and are quietly becoming a force beyond the city’s borders.
Helcim is a prime example of one that has been under the radar, yet, in its short life, has become a $35-million a year revenue company.
The person behind the success is Nicolas Beique, founder and CEO of Helcim, who is a star in the field of payments technology. He was born in Texas where his father worked as a petroleum engineer, but before his first birthday, the family returned to Montreal. He lived there until the family moved again to Calgary when he was 12.
Beique admits to not liking school or being a good student while at Central Memorial High School, but he was fascinated by computers. Self-taught, he began programming as a young teenager. He arranged for school lessons to be in the mornings so that he could work at a Memory Express location in the afternoons. Evenings were dedicated to a couple of businesses he launched.
After high school, he began doing web design, graphics and programming but soon realized the future was in programming. Importantly, he also discovered there were not many online pay options for small businesses. So, while in his second year at DeVry Institute of Technology, he and a partner launched Helcim to provide one.
Beique says it was tough going at the start, especially as it was essential to partner with a bank and no Canadian financial institute would sign on. Fortunately, Helcim came to the attention of a U.S. bank trying to establish a foothold in Canada and it was willing to support a 23-year-old local entrepreneur.
It was a good decision. Progress was rapid and, within a year, they had 49 e-commerce clients and then a breakthrough came in the retail field when Peter Kinjo agreed to install a Helcim machine in his Macleod Trail Kinjo Sushi & Grill. Today, it services all of the Kinjo locations.
Unfortunately, the original partnership split and Beique became the sole owner four years ago. Working nights and weekends, he was able to build the staff up from two to seven in two years, moving into 4,000 square feet of space at CANA Construction’s building on 4th Street off 58th Avenue S.E.
He recently moved the company into 9,000 square feet on the third floor where today he has a staff of 34 and continues to hire talented graduates in computer science. And this city has many — 270 applied for three recent software development positions.
The growth of Helcim has been rather remarkable, with a current list of more than 6,000 clients who processed $2.5 billion in payments last year. About 400 of those clients are in Calgary — primarily small businesses which can now accept payments online at less cost than with other service companies and in a transparent way that is local and totally secure. Companies concerned about the liability of storing buyer information on their own computers can rely on Helcim’s secure credit card vault.
Beique has built up a very successful Calgary-based company that is “finding a better way.” He is confident of reaching a goal of multiplying its customer base 10 times within the next three years. That’s 60,000 customers across North America.
News and notes: Jon Horsman, former co-head of ATB Financial’s corporate financial services team, is the new chairman and CEO of AltaCorp Capital, the capital markets arm of ATB.
In less than a decade, AltaCorp has amassed more than $75 billion in transactions, focused on the sectors that drive the western Canadian economy — energy, agriculture and diversified industries.