Everlink is preparing to celebrate 20 years of delivering best-in-class payment innovations to credit unions, banks, and other businesses across Canada. We’ve been honored to help a growing number of clients keep pace with ever-evolving technologies and stay at the forefront of an increasingly competitive marketplace.

To celebrate this upcoming milestone, we’ll be looking back at some of the most memorable moments in Canadian payments over the last 20 years and will provide our expert take on what the future may hold.  In the first edition of this series, we start with a summary of Everlink’s founding and a look at some noteworthy events from our history.  

 

The Early Days

Founded by a group of payments executives representing NYCE (New York Cash Exchange) from New York and Celero Solutions from Calgary (owned by Credit Union Central of Manitoba, SaskCentral, and Alberta Central), Everlink was created to satisfy a growing demand in the Canadian credit union marketplace for a new debit switching alternative and began serving credit union clients when we processed our first Interac transactions in May of 2004.

In 2005 Everlink acquired CGI’s credit union switching assets, a move which allowed us to tap into a rich history that dates back to the late 1970’s when Co-Operators Data Services Limited (CDSL) developed Canada’s first ATM  applications (CGI purchased CDSL in 1997). With this acquisition came dozens of former CGI employees, many of whom were ex-CDSL employees, who came together to form a team which became the backbone of our fast-growing organization. In addition, the acquisition included a long list of credit union and bank clients from across the nation.

In 2007 Mark Ripplinger took over as President & CEO. Within his first few years at the helm, he began an ambitious plan to diversify Everlink’s business and solution portfolio into a series of business verticals, or Lines of Business (LoB). In addition to the existing core Network Payment Gateway this grew to include Card Issuance, Fraud Management, ATM Managed Services, Professional Services and more recently Mobile Payments, Digital Solutions, and Retail and SME Solutions. This diversification laid the foundation for Everlink’s evolution into the multi-faceted company that exists today.  

 

Keeping Up with the Times 

One of the main challenges facing financial institutions across Canada in the first years of Ripplinger’s leadership was the transition to EMV technology (aka chip-and-pin cards). Although many industry watchers predicted an uphill battle for the national conversion, Everlink (a select member of the of the multi-lateral Kitchener-Waterloo EMV trial in 2007) kept its clients at the forefront of this transition and ahead of the EMV compliance deadlines for ATMs and cards. This includes credit unions like Connexus and Cambrian who enabled end-to-end for EMV transactions in 2009 and 2010 respectively.  

EMV was a major undertaking, but it was far from the last big innovation in Canadian payments. And with a lot of hard work and determination, our clients have managed to keep pace with them every step of the way.  

 

• In 2012 we helped introduce contactless payments to the nation by launching dual-interface cards with Interac Flash®. Important to note: Everlink was the 4th institution to introduce Interac Flash® closely following three of Canada’s largest banks within a matter of days – and ahead of all other institutions! 
• In 2015 Everlink was the first payments company to launch mobile payments for credit unions and delivered Apple Pay for credit unions in 2016.  
• In 2017 Everlink helped Servus become the first Canadian credit union to launch co-branded Debit Mastercard. Today, co-branded cards are available for all credit unions and banks for Debit Mastercard and Visa Debit.  
• In 2020, we unveiled eDetect+™ – our award winning, best-in-class, enterprise Fraud Solution to protect financial institutions from evolving threats. 
• In 2023 we partnered to accelerate the provision of Open Banking connectivity and help financial institutions get a jump on this new frontier. 

 

“Payments is an incredibly fast-paced industry – one that gets more complex with every passing year,” says Mark Ripplinger President and CEO of Everlink. “We attribute our success to our disciplined focus on a very deliberate, purposeful strategy, the quality of our staff – who are some of the most knowledgeable, experienced, and dedicated in the world – and to our focus on our Guiding Principles, chief among them being our commitment to Client Centricity. Whether big or small we are committed to the successful delivery of any and all projects. Whether that’s helping clients make the monumental transition to EMV over a decade ago, to the new challenges posed by Open Banking and beyond, we’re here to help.” 

 

Everlink Today 

On the cusp of our 20th anniversary, we’re proud of how far we’ve come (as some of these stats can attest)

• We serve ~98% of Canadian credit unions and ~55% of consumer facing schedule 1 and 2 banks (by total number of institutions). 

• In 2023 we’ll process ~3.42 billion transactions (up 30.5% from 2.62B in 2022) 
• We process 100% of Interac mobile debit transactions as well as 100% of debit transactions for Square, Adyen,  Worldpay and Stripe in Canada. 
• Our 8-year average Client Loyalty index of 86.4% and 82.1% Employee Engagement index are both well above industry averages. 
• We’ve issued over 8 million debit cards and have approximately 4.6 million card authorized file (CAF) records under management. 
• We manage approximately 2,800+ ATMs from coast to coast. 
• We’ve won a multitude of awards for business excellence and product innovation. This includes the World-Wide ACI Customer Innovation Award in the Fraud Management Category, the People’s Choice Award from ACT Canada for our Lock’N’Block® solution, and the Global Payments Innovation Award from ACI Worldwide for eDETECT™. 

 

The Future is Digital 

Ever mindful of emerging trends, we’re helping our clients embrace the latest technologies.

Launched in 2021 Everlink’s Digital Solutions line of business offers a growing array of products. This includes our Interac e-Transfer® service that provide Canadians with an increasingly popular means to pay and be paid. It also provides an answer for one of the biggest transformations facing financial institutions today: Open Banking. Thankfully, the ground-breaking Everlink Open Banking Solution ensures that clients can capitalize on this emerging frontier all while staying protected with eDETECT+™  our industry leading enterprise fraud solution. 

“Of course, none of this would have been possible without all of the clients who put their trust in our organization for all these years,” says Ripplinger. “For this, I want to take this opportunity to thank you and to reaffirm our commitment to another 20 years of partnership and innovation.”