Fortis Expands to Canada, Adds Fee Collection Feature, Acquires SmartPay

Embedded payments solution provider Fortis has expanded to Canada, added a new feature and acquired SmartPay.

The expansion to Canada, which is Fortis’ first market outside the United States, makes all of the company’s solutions available to software platforms and businesses operating in the market, Fortis said in a Thursday (June 22) press release.

The new feature added by Fortis is called Secondary Amount and allows its integrated software partners to assess and collect platform fees and other types of fees when processing payments through Fortis’ solutions, according to the release. It also allows them to have the fees assessed as part of a single transaction while being deposited separately.

“The single authorization and split settlement capability is critical for high-performing marketplace partners,” Fortis said in the release.

The acquisition of SmartPay, another embedded payment solution provider, brings that firm’s team, customer relationships and capabilities to Fortis, per the release.

“The SmartPay acquisition gives Fortis access to a skilled team of integrated payments professionals and enables the company to leverage the strong relationships SmartPay built, strengthening Fortis’ ability to serve scaling client businesses in complex markets,” Fortis said in the release.

The announcement of this acquisition comes seven months after Fortis bought payment technology firm Payment Logistics to expand its technology offerings.

That acquisition strengthened Fortis’ tools and infrastructure while improving its “ability to enhance the merchant and customer experience with embedded payments,” Fortis CEO Greg Cohen said when announcing the acquisition in November.

In September, Fortis partnered with hotel tech provider Visual Matrix to enable hotel operators to offer their guests more payment choices.

Embedded payments have allowed for the adoption of technology to drive payments and solve pain points that have existed for decades, Ashley Usher, who was chief integration and information officer at Fortis at the time and is now chief operating officer at the company, told PYMNTS in an article posted in January 2022.

“Through an increasingly connected world, we are aimed at guiding a journey for our software partners that enables commerce and creates meaningful payments experiences for the SMBs we have the privilege to support,” Usher said at the time.