Wise has become one of the first Payment Services Providers (PSPs) to be granted membership to Payments Canada. This milestone will enable Wise to deepen its service offering for Canadian customers, further establishing the company as a key financial player in Canada.
As a member of Payments Canada, Wise is now eligible to apply to participate in Canada’s national payment systems including the Automated Clearing Settlement System, Lynx and the forthcoming Real-Time Rail. Once a participant, Wise will be able to speed up transfer times and reduce costs for people and businesses moving money internationally in and out of Canada.
Canada is actively enhancing its payments modernization efforts, which included the federal government’s recent legislative changes that opened Payments Canada membership to non-bank (PSPs) for the first time. This decision places Canada among a group of G20 economies that have acted on commitments to improve cross-border payments. According to Wise’s 2025 G20 Report, Canada now joins a select group of eight G20 member nations that currently offer direct access to payment systems to non-bank payment service providers.
The next major milestone in Canada’s payments modernization journey will be the launch of its new instant payment system, the Real-Time Rail (RTR). As a member, Wise can now apply to connect to the RTR to offer customers even faster, lower-cost, more transparent and convenient international payment services for customers in Canada and globally.
Wise believes that moving money should be instant, low-cost and fair for everyone. Over 15 years, we’ve developed Wise’s global infrastructure so that moving and managing money internationally is as seamless, fast and affordable for our customers as possible. This network now includes direct access to domestic payment systems in eight markets including the UK, Europe, Hungary, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Brazil and the Philippines. Wise’s membership to Payments Canada is an important next step in strengthening this unique global network, which enables Wise to deliver 74 per cent of payments instantly (in less than 20 seconds)1 at an average cost of just 0.52 per cent per transaction2.
Wise continues to see strong growth in Canada, with active customers increasing by more than 30 per cent in FY25 alone. At a time when affordability is top of mind, Canada’s modernization efforts allow Wise to better serve its consumer and business customers worldwide, passing on cost savings directly and delivering on its vision of money without borders for everyone.
1 Transaction speed depends on individual circumstances and may not be available for all transactions.
2 Please see https://wise.com/ca/pricing/ for more information.
Mantas emerges from stealth with funding round to insure cloud downtime with parametric coverage
Posted in Commentary with tags Mantas on January 27, 2026 by itnerdCloud infrastructure has become the backbone of modern business. Yet when cloud services fail, the financial consequences are often immediate and severe, while protection remains limited or nonexistent. Mantas was founded on the belief that cloud downtime is no longer a technical inconvenience, but a material business risk that should be measured, priced, and insured. Today, the company announced its launch from stealth alongside a seed funding round to introduce parametric insurance for cloud outages.
The round totals $1.77 million and includes participation from Nuwa Capital, Suhail Ventures, Plus VC, OQAL Angel Syndicate, and strategic angel investors. The capital will support product development, risk modeling, and early customer deployments across the MENA region and North America.
The launch comes as reliance on hyperscale cloud infrastructure continues to accelerate, particularly in regions undergoing rapid digital transformation. Businesses now operate on always-on platforms where even minutes of downtime can halt transactions, disrupt operations, and erode customer trust. Traditional approaches to managing this risk rely on SLAs, legal contracts, and resilience engineering, all of which offer limited financial certainty when failures occur. Mantas takes a different approach by applying parametric insurance to cloud outages, enabling automatic payouts triggered by verified outage data rather than lengthy claims processes.
Mantas provides tailored cloud outage insurance combined with real-time cloud risk monitoring. Its coverage is designed for digital-first companies whose revenues and operations depend on continuous cloud availability, including fintechs, airlines, e-commerce platforms, SaaS providers, and regulated enterprises. When predefined outage conditions are met, payouts trigger automatically, providing fast and transparent liquidity that allows businesses to respond, recover, and protect customer trust. Beyond coverage, Mantas also delivers risk intelligence to help companies understand their exposure and strengthen infrastructure decisions before failures occur.
The idea for Mantas originated from a firsthand experience with cloud failure. Founder and CEO Basil Mimi encountered a widespread outage while trying to place a food order, only to watch the disruption escalate into significant losses and public fallout for the business involved. As a software engineer, the incident highlighted a blind spot in how cloud risk was being managed. While outages were measurable and predictable, the financial risk remained largely uninsured. Discovering parametric insurance models used in sectors like agriculture and weather provided the missing piece and became the foundation for Mantas.
The need for this shift is becoming increasingly apparent as cloud adoption concentrates risk across a small number of critical platforms. In North America, cloud outages are increasingly systemic rather than isolated incidents. In the Middle East, governments and enterprises are scaling cloud infrastructure at record speed as they leapfrog into cloud-first operations. In both regions, financial protection has lagged behind technological reliance, creating structural exposure across digital-first industries.
Mantas plans to expand its platform alongside the evolving use of cloud and AI infrastructure. As architectures become more interconnected and failures increasingly cascade across services, the company aims to extend coverage across emerging digital risks while strengthening its real-time monitoring and risk intelligence. The long-term vision is to ensure businesses are never left financially exposed as their technology stacks and dependencies evolve.
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