Zum Rails
“Can a Canadian payments-rail aggregator become the all-in-one embedded-finance OS for North American businesses — unifying payments, card issuance, KYC, and BaaS without requiring any sponsor bank?”
Founded2019
HQMontreal, Quebec, Canada
FoundersMiles Schwartz, Marcel Ferreira, Marc Milewski
Total raisedCAD $10.5M
Latest roundSeries A, February 2024
IndustryInfrastructure / Payments
The story
Founded in 2019 as an open-banking-first payments gateway focused on EFT and Interac rails in Canada. Expanded into the US market with ACH, RTP, and FedNow to become a unified US+Canada payments platform serving 500+ clients. In 2024-2025, pivoted toward a full embedded-finance operating system ('Zum OS') adding BaaS, card issuance, wallet functionality, KYC, and a PayFac layer — most notably becoming the first Canadian company to self-issue Mastercard cards without a sponsor bank.
Last 12 months
2024-02
Product timeline
2019
Founded in Montreal by Miles Schwartz, Marcel Ferreira, and Marc Milewski with a vision to make payments smarter through open banking.· pivot
2023
Added FedNow support as one of the first Canadian-originated payments platforms to access the US instant payments rail.· banking
2024
Raised Series A of CAD $10.5M led by Arthur Ventures to fund BaaS and FedNow product expansion.· banking
2024
Named Canada's Top Startup by LinkedIn in 2024.· pivot
2025
Became first payments company in Canada to self-issue Mastercard prepaid and secured credit cards with its own BIN — no sponsor bank required.· card
2025
Launched Secured Credit Building Card program, reporting directly to credit bureaus and generating interchange revenue for business clients.· card
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Zum Rails
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in Zum Rails’s embedded-finance stack
Money movement
Card network
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
KYC
in the full report
Accounting gap: significant
5 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.