Gezim Ramabaja doesn’t know where his entrepreneurial spirit comes from; he just knows that when he sees an opportunity, he can’t resist pursuing it.
At age 18 he founded a coffee shop in his hometown in Kosovo, and after moving to Canada in 2006 and enrolling at Laurier University he started a restaurant, and later a construction company, despite having no prior experience with either.
“I had no idea how to make a sandwich, let alone run a kitchen,” he says. “For me, dealing with ambiguity is a drive; when I see an opportunity that is complex, and I have no idea how it works, I want to learn.”
It was during those early entrepreneurial ventures that Ramabaja identified another opportunity. His employees, who were primarily students, often relied on parents to help cover their bills, but often ran into technical issues, unnecessary hurtles and high fees when making payments, especially among international students.
“Initially it was about letting customers pay bills, or share bills, if they need to have their monthly recurring bills paid by somebody else,” he says. “They will be able to share those without [the payer] having Canadian bank accounts.”
After graduating from Laurier with an Executive Master of Technology Management, selling his other ventures, and moving to Mississauga with his wife in 2017, Ramabaja began working on his new business, Zpayd, in early 2021.
It was around that time that he discovered the Mississauga Innovation District. “It was really a no-brainer for me to get involved and get engaged, and the support was immense,” he says.
Ramabaja says the program helped him secure prime real estate in the heart of the city at an affordable rate, helped him develop a local network, and provided access to finance veterans who could help him navigate the industry.
“When you’re building a business, you need someone that is not always ‘yes sir,’ but can be critical and upfront with you,” he says. “Being in an environment where people are more up front really helped me, and the City of Mississauga has been great for that.”
Ramabaja says the business was growing steadily at first, but eventually grew too quickly for his small team to manage.
“We were getting about 18, 20 sign ups a day, which was pretty scary… like how can I handle this kind of volume without having a proper team in place?” he says. “And then I went to [FinTech conference] Money 20/20 in Vegas where I met a few executives from enterprises who said, ‘we love what you’re doing, but you can probably provide this service directly to us,’ and that was a turning point for me.”
This past summer Ramabaja pivoted his strategy from B2C to B2B, and onboarded his first major partner, MoneyGram — an American digital payments solution with 150 million users worldwide — in October.
“We’ve signed them up for Canada to provide bill pay as a service to them through all their locations, online, and at Canada Post locations,” he says. “Now a dad in China can pay tuition and utilities in Canada without having a Canadian bank account, without wiring funds and paying wire fees, and send funds directly to the biller.”
The same service also allows Canadian expats to pay bills in a new country without setting up a local bank account. Now Ramabaja is working with major financial institutions in Canada and the United States to develop a debt consolidation product that lets lenders deliver funds directly to clients’ billers, among other innovative solutions.
After years of jumping from one opportunity to the next Ramabaja says he’s now squarely focussed on building Zpayd, though his entrepreneurial curiosity still drives him to solve new challenges for his customers.
“I think I’m settled now in the financial industry,” he says. “This is where I want to retire this crazy journey.”
