Helcim, a Calgary-based payment processor built for small and mid-sized businesses, closed a C$53 million Series C on August 27, led by BDC Capital’s Growth Venture Fund with new money from Curql Collective and Gold House Ventures. The round lifts Helcim’s valuation to C$250 million, more than double the C$97 million it carried at its 2024 Series B, and brings its total equity raised to roughly C$100 million since a 2022 Series A.
The company has crossed C$150 million in annual recurring revenue, grown to 200 employees, and now serves more than 22,000 active merchants across Canada and the US, processing close to C$10 billion in payment volume a year. The raise explicitly frames itself against a retreat happening elsewhere in Canadian banking: several of the country’s largest banks have sold off or outsourced their merchant-services units in recent years, leaving small businesses without a bank-native option for card acceptance.
That vacuum is the real story. As large banks on both sides of the border pull back from hands-on small-business payment relationships, independent processors are stepping in not just as a card-swipe utility but as the primary financial infrastructure layer for merchants who used to bank that relationship at a branch. Helcim’s growth mirrors a broader pattern this publication has tracked among payments companies building toward being the rails themselves rather than renting infrastructure from a bank partner, a shift that gives investors more confidence to fund standalone processors at rising valuations even in a market where bank-backed alternatives still exist.
Source: PR Newswire
