I help immigrants build new lives (and credit) – Macleans.ca

I have wanted to travel the world since I was a teenager. In 2009, after studying mechanical engineering at a university in Nigeria, I got a job with an oil and gas company that sent me to Texas. Three years later, I moved to India for work and have since lived in 15 countries. During all that traveling around the world, I met and married my wife, Bola, and we had two children. For years, Bola and the children shuttled back and forth between Nigeria and wherever I was at the time. Over time, I realized how much my jet-setting life was disrupting our family, so Bola and I decided to find a permanent place we could call home. She suggested Canada.

In August 2019, the four of us arrived with Bola’s student visa. She was studying business at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario, while I was working remotely for a company in Europe. We had already lived in many countries, so I didn’t think anything would go wrong. Then everything did.

Upon landing, my Uber app didn’t work because I didn’t have a Canadian credit card. We had only brought debit cards: Nigeria and all the countries I have lived in worked with debit. We ended up paying cash for a taxi to take us to our hotel. There, the front desk said they couldn’t accept our reservation without a credit card, so we paid a deposit equal to a three-night stay before they would accept us. I also couldn’t rent a car without a credit card, so I walked for an hour to the house I wanted to rent. There, the owner asked me for six months of credit history in Canada to secure the place. Finally, I walked to a bank to ask for a credit card, where the teller told me that I would first have to open an account, but to do so I would need a home address.

I was frustrated. We were stranded upon arrival. I shared my doubts with a friend in Nigeria, who then put me in touch with his friend, another Nigerian, named Catherine, who had been in Canada for many years. The next day, she drove up, rented us a car in her name, and co-signed the lease for our apartment. We moved to our new place after a week at the hotel.

At that time I did not understand the concept of credit. At home, debt is a bad thing: no one wants to owe anyone money. But in Canada, credit underpins much of daily life, allowing banks and landlords to assess your risk profile. This creates a gap in the immigration system: the only way a person can start a life here is with a credit history, which newcomers do not have. I have met many immigrants who faced the same obstacle. One person told me that he landed in Canada as a permanent resident and got a job at a bank, but the same bank that hired him rejected him for a credit card because he didn’t have a six-month credit history.

I wanted to solve this problem. I reached out to an engineer friend in Alberta to help me start an online banking app for new immigrants. Together, we started the software with our own funds and incorporated it in August 2020. Five months later, we launched the app, which we called Expedier. Our first phase was to leverage open banking to give immigrants instant access to their money from international banks by depositing their funds into a Canadian bank account. Then we launched a debit card where users could load money and spend it in Canada.

We are now in phase two of Expedier: the credit building phase. This summer, we will begin reporting our customers’ rent payments to the credit bureaus so that users can establish and strengthen their credit history in Canada. In phase three next year, we will launch a credit card for newcomers. My initial Canadian card had a limit of $500 due to my lack of credit history. We will give our users higher limits based on their international credit history.

Our app has been downloaded about 10,000 times and we now have about 8,000 active users. I recently heard from a student who was only able to pay his tuition in Canada after registering with Expedier and accessing her money from Nigeria. Last year, we raised around $300,000 from a family and friends campaign and started working with Google’s startup accelerator. We want to continue growing the app and continue helping newcomers build their lives and credit.

This story appears in the May issue of Maclean’s. You can buy the issue. here or subscribe to the magazine here.