Canadians spend thousands every month on rent, taxes, utilities, and other unavoidable expenses, yet traditionally receive little value in return. What’s broken about the way Canadians pay their largest bills, and how is Chexy changing that?
Liza Akhvledziani Carew: The problem is that some of the biggest payments Canadians make every month have historically been completely unrewarded.
We’ve built a world where you can earn points for buying a coffee or booking a flight, but your rent, mortgage, property taxes or utilities can represent thousands of dollars in spending and you get nothing back.
At Chexy, we’ve changed that by making essential payments rewarding. We started with rent, and now we’re bringing that same model to taxes, utilities and as of August this year, mortgages and other major recurring expenses. Our goal is to make sure the biggest payments in your life can also help pay for the life you want to live.
Chexy has grown from solving a problem for renters to helping Canadians pay a much broader range of expenses. What did you learn from your customers that convinced you Chexy could become something much bigger than a rent-payment platform?
Liza Akhvledziani Carew: Our customers showed us pretty quickly that rent was just the starting point. Once people began using Chexy, they started asking us what else they could pay through the platform. We learned the underlying demand was much broader than we initially thought.
People weren’t just looking for a better way to pay rent. They were looking for more flexibility and more options around some of the biggest payments in their lives.
That feedback has been a big part of how we’ve thought about expanding Chexy beyond our original use case. Users can earn rewards on taxes, utilities and as of this month, mortgages.
With the cost of living remaining a major concern, how should Canadians think differently about credit cards, rewards, and recurring expenses? What mistakes do you see people making when trying to maximize their rewards?
Liza Akhvledziani Carew: Instead of being drawn in by the biggest advertised points offers, look at where your money is already going and choose rewards that align with those expenses. Think about what you’re likely to spend over the next 12 months and what those rewards could actually be worth to you.
The mistake is changing your spending habits or spending more just to chase points. The goal should be to earn more value from the money that’s already part of your budget.
Chexy has already attracted more than 200,000 Canadians. What have been the biggest drivers behind that growth, and what does it tell you about the demand for alternative ways to manage and get more value from everyday payments?
Liza Akhvledziani Carew: The biggest driver has been starting with a problem every renter in Canada recognizes instantly: rent is most people’s single largest monthly expense, yet it was historically the one payment you couldn’t put on a credit card, earn rewards on, or use to build credit. We never had to convince anyone the problem was real, renters immediately got it.
From there, growth has come from really understanding who our members are and where the rest of their money goes. Once you’re earning rewards on rent, the natural next question is: why aren’t all my other bills doing the same?
So we followed that question into bills, tuition, taxes, and condo fees and now mortgages, which is the same problem at even greater scale. Each category we’ve added has compounded the growth of the last.
The same logic is pulling us into serving businesses with vendor bills and payroll, but at its core this is a consumer story.
We also haven’t grown alone. Partnering with leading loyalty programs like Aeroplan has validated what we’re solving. When Canada’s biggest loyalty players are looking for ways for their members to earn on essential payments, it tells you this is no longer a niche behaviour.
That’s really what our member tells us: people are no longer willing to accept that their biggest expenses generate no value. Especially in this cost of living environment, consumers have become more rewards savvy, and they’re demanding more from their financial products.
Looking ahead three to five years, what does the future of payments in Canada look like, and where do you see Chexy fitting into the financial lives of renters, homeowners, and business owners?
Liza Akhvledziani Carew: In three to five years, I think the line between paying and earning disappears. Payments in Canada are getting more digital and more automated, and as that happens, people will stop accepting that money can leave their account without giving anything back.
We watched rewards on discretionary spending go from novelty to table stakes and essential payments are next. The idea of paying your largest monthly expense and getting nothing in return will feel as dated as mailing a cheque.
For Chexy, the ambition is to be there for the entire journey. The member who joins us as a renter collecting points on their first apartment becomes the homeowner collecting on their mortgage and property taxes, and eventually the business owner paying rent on their first location then their fifth with vendor bills and payroll scaling with us as they grow.
Renters, homeowners, business owners to us, those aren’t three different markets. They’re the same Canadian at three stages of life, and we already serve all three today.
And rewards are only part of the value. These are the most consistent payments Canadians make, so the end state is simple: every essential payment should leave you better off than it found you.
In five years, I don’t think that will sound ambitious, it’ll just be what Canadians expect, and our job is to be the platform they expect it from.
As a founder who moved to Canada as an international student and later built one of the country’s fastest-growing fintechs, what’s a lesson from that journey about making it in Canada, leadership, money, risk, or building trust with customers?
Liza Akhvledziani Carew: I arrived in Canada as a student and discovered the financial system here runs on unwritten rules. Nobody hands you the manual. I learned that the expensive way, with credit card debt that took years to pay off on a student budget.
But the real lesson wasn’t about credit cards. It was that the gap between people who understand the system and people who don’t is enormous, and it compounds.
What Canada is missing is the education and products built for how people actually live. That’s what I’m building with Chexy. I had to reverse-engineer the system myself, and now we make it work for people to enable them to live a bigger life they deserve.
