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Cyder, a Toronto-based fintech startup providing a specialized, community-focused loyalty platform for Canadian credit unions, announced a new round of seed financing allowing the company to further expand.
The $3 million in new funding was led by Conexus Venture Capital, a fund backed by major credit unions across Canada, with additional participation from MaRS IAF, Graphite Ventures and Sprout Fund. It comes on top of $1.5 million in pre-seed funding in 2025.
“Loyalty is more important now than ever and there is a massive opportunity in this space as it relates to credit unions,” wrote Jordan McFarlen, managing director at Conexus Venture Capital, in the announcement. “We’re excited to be leading this financing round alongside a great group of co-investors.”
Cyder’s loyalty platform is being used by credit unions across Canada, from small credit unions with some 8,000 members to larger organizations with more than 400,000 members across urban and rural markets in Canada and the United States.
The funding will allow Cyder to expand the reach of its platform as loyalty programs are now becoming a central mechanism of engagement with customers in a growing number of financial institutions. Loyalty is moving from a marketing tactic to a core banking member-experience, seen in such programs as RBC Avion Rewards, TD’s Aeroplan partnership and the recently announced evolution of BMO Air Miles to BMO Blue Rewards.
Member engagement through loyalty
Cyder cofounder Will Christodoulou said historically, credit unions lacked the technology to compete in this loyalty space, even though one-in-three Canadians use a credit union for their everyday banking needs.
“They were struggling to be able to grow their market and to compete with the big banks when it came to share of wallet, especially when trying to compete for that share of wallet when it came to loyalty programs,” he added. “Credit unions are traditionally much smaller than the big banks. They do not have the teams or the size to build out a sophisticated loyalty technology that the big banks do.
"What we did was to build a solution that fits credit unions, small and large, so they can compete with the RBCs and TDs out there.”
Cyder’s platform allows credit unions to create highly personalized loyalty programs that best meet the needs of their members and can be seamlessly integrated into the everyday banking processes and digital online and mobile offerings.
Christodoulou said credit unions can easily and simply scale the solution to add more features as they grow their membership. It allows them to give members ways of collecting and redeeming rewards for everyday banking operations, connecting a member’s banking activity to local and community-driven rewards and charitable donations, to creating targeted rewards with local businesses affiliated with the credit union.
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