Tomisin Salam’s entrepreneurial story is rooted in purpose, strategy, and real-world impact. He went from selling clothes from the trunk of a car in university to building a globally relevant payment infrastructure and launching a nonprofit that provides resources and tools for the immigrant community in Canada.
When Tomisin launched FiatMatch, a startup focused on global payments infrastructure, it marked a new chapter in his entrepreneurial journey. He wasn’t new to building businesses, but this one was different. FiatMatch was shaped by years of trial and error, and a conviction that business should solve real problems, not just chase profit.
This is a journey that proves problems can become opportunities when you’re willing to put in the work.
Tomisin hasn’t raised a dime in funding yet. Bootstrapped with over $400,000 of personal savings, FiatMatch was built slowly and deliberately.
“I didn’t want to get the wrong investors. Now we’re ready to scale and we’re starting to talk to the right partners.” He says.
In this in-depth conversation, Tomisin shares the story behind his journey, philosophy on business, thoughts on strategy, why he chose infrastructure over a traditional fintech product, and how his nonprofit, Immigrant Library, is setting a new benchmark for immigrant support in Canada.
Part of this interview has been edited for clarity.
Q: How did your entrepreneurial journey begin?
Tomisin: My dad was a Coca-Cola executive, and my mom worked for the Nigerian Ports Authority, but trading was her main job. And when I graduated from high school back in 1999, I used to drive my mom to work every day. After dropping her off, I’d deliver textiles and gold to her customers, sometimes picking them up from local wholesalers before making more drop-offs. She paid me for the help, so I was already earning.
By late 2000 into 2001, I got into university. She gave me a car, and since I was used to making money, I thought of how to keep that going. She initially gave me some makeup products to sell, but that didn’t go too well. My classmates wouldn’t pay me. I lost money. I quickly learned there’s a big difference between knowing your customers and not knowing them.
So I pivoted to clothing. I was driven by a desire to be independent, earn my own income, and support myself. That marked the beginning of my journey in the fashion business.
I’d buy clothes from Katangua market in Lagos to resell. Later, I started buying designers from Berlin and used my car trunk as a mobile shop. Eventually, I began sending money to relatives abroad to help me purchase inventory, which they would ship back to Nigeria.
And while I was observing National Youth Service Corps, I got close to my bosses by virtue of me selling clothing to them. The company I worked with at the time was going through bankruptcy and they brought me in because they didn’t have a standardized accounting payroll system.
So with the help of some consultants, we built the first accounting payroll system with an Excel spreadsheet. I thought about it at the time that, this is an opportunity. Companies in Nigeria can’t afford the likes of SAP. So I moved to Canada with the intention of building tech that can simplify payroll and accounting for businesses and companies.
I did human resources, became chartered and I went to Waterloo to do a Masters of Business Entrepreneurship Technology to build that technology. So that started my journey into working with startups, building startups, advising startups, and building several companies.
Q: You’ve built some very innovative businesses. What’s your philosophy? What drives you in terms of sectors and areas that you decide to solve problems in?
Tomisin: So, first, I love solving problems. That’s the core of my innovation mindset. If I walk into a room and see something not working, I want to fix it. That’s how my fashion business started, it wasn’t just for money, but because I was always looking good. People admired my style and they kept asking me about it, and I realized there was a gap, because a lot of people probably didn’t have access to buying from abroad, or there’s nowhere they could find what they really wished for. The gaps in the market is what I look for.
Now, fast forward to what got me to build FiatMatch: so during the pandemic, I needed to move all of my money from Nigeria to Canada because I knew the currency was going to get devalued. But for every $10,000 I brought to Canada, I was losing about $2,000 because the exchange rate had moved from 185 Naira to 400 Naira. That frustration drove me to explore all the solutions in the market.
I dug into the World Bank Archive to understand the real issue. Despite the number of money transfer companies out there, the core problems remain unsolved. What I found is that most of these services rely heavily on layers of intermediaries. Each one takes a cut, uses their own providers, and adds a markup. In the end, the process becomes more expensive and less efficient for the user.
So my philosophy is if I am facing a problem or people around me are facing a problem, I’m always looking for a way to fix it directly or indirectly. And another thing that I think about when I innovate is, there is always going to be the next thing, like AI. But there are certain things that are not going to change 10 years from now. And when you look at those things that are not going to change 10 years from now, it means that the only thing that will change is how efficient or how faster, or how better you can make those things.
For example, clothing will always be in demand. You can innovate around how people buy clothes, or how cheap those clothes are. Similarly, people will continue to make payments, but the methods used to pay may evolve. These are areas where innovation can thrive, and they are not going anywhere anytime soon.
So those are the ways that I think about the solutions that I solve. And then, you know, I worked for a company, it was just an idea at the time when I moved to Canada. We loaded educational content on tablets, so we could ship to different undeserved countries where kids don’t have access to YouTube or online learning and we loaded $5,000 worth of educational materials on the tablet that we sold for $50 and that company went to win so many awards, and I told myself that whatever business, next business, I was going to build, has to have some sort of impact in it.
So, at FiatMatch, we’ve evolved the money transfer company into a global payment infrastructure. Helping FinTech launch their business faster.
Some money service companies, for instance, have closed because they couldn’t innovate. But innovation is different from the foundational things they need to have to be able to innovate. It took me years to get past regulations and even build a solution. So I’m thinking that if I can provide the foundational infrastructure for several kinds of fintechs or businesses to build on top, this could solve a variety of challenges across different industries.
Q: Let’s talk about the Immigrant Library. What inspired you to build that?
Tomisin: Okay, great. Thank you. I am obviously an immigrant. When I moved to Canada, I didn’t know anybody. No family. I was lucky to have a friend who took me in for about a month before I went to school, but things were very, very hard.
I had friends who ruined their credit, struggled with basic things because they lacked the right information, and resources. Yes, there are centers that provide some sort of help or resources to immigrant, but still, people were falling victim of several things.
So we decided to build a platform that gives immigrants resources like jobs, resume templates, AI-driven chat for immigration support, forums, and more.
We focus on people who are new to the country, those who may not have had the chance to complete their education or can’t easily go back to school. We connect them with marketable skills they can learn in one to three months. Skills that can actually get them hired.
In cases where any immigrant comes to the country and they need help with anything, they should be able to search for anything, information, resources, opportunities, and find it all in one place.
The immigrant library that you see, we’re not even close to where we want to be. There’s a lot within the immigrant library, there’s an area within the immigrant library where you’d be able to log in.
The platform is still evolving, but the vision is big. The Immigrant Library includes a job board, a discussion forum, and even an AI assistant, like a ChatGPT, but specifically trained to answer questions related to immigration and life in Canada. There are so many things within it. I’ve created over 99 resume templates, which will be available for free within the immigrant library.
Because the truth is, many immigrants are highly skilled, and all they need are the right opportunities. So if they have the right information to propel their success, then we can have a level playing field for them to compete in Canada.
So that’s what started the immigrant library.
Q: Are you running FiatMatch and Immigrant Library simultaneously?
Tomisin: Yes. FiatMatch is for-profit, and Immigrant Library is a nonprofit. They’re connected in mission, and that is to remove barriers and give access. I believe in building for impact.
Q: So what exactly is FiatMatch, and how is it different from companies like Mono? Are you aware of Mono?
Tomisin: Yes, I know Mono. So we’re different now. When we started, Mono was one of the companies we contacted to provide services in Nigeria, but now we are more of an infrastructure.
So, let me break it down. If you wanted to start a remittance company today, you need about six partnerships. With a partner that is going to provide you the identity verification tool, you will pay a lot of money to that partner. You need to get your license, you need to get your compliance regime, you see all those things that I’ve counted, they don’t really contribute to the business, but you have to have them to safeguard the business. Right? You need a banking partner in Canada. But the big banks in Canada don’t work with money service businesses. So your options are limited to two or three smaller providers, but the entry cost to work with those companies are very high for a startup, right?
The one that everybody goes to doesn’t give you much, in that, they can only provide you access to the Canadian system, but as money transfer company, you need access to collect in canada, you need access to payout in so many other countries. So you’re solving for a banking partner in Canada. You’re solving from a payout partner all over the world, that’s four or five partners. And then you’re still trying to do customer management and then you still have the app itself to build.
And in a country like Canada, investors are cautious, especially when it comes to MSBs. If you’re doing MSB, you have a slim chance of being funded. You probably need to go to the US right, to get good funding for remittance company. And there’s so much competition, right? So there’s so many things involved and that’s why it took us so long to even get to where we are.
You know, if we weren’t talking to customers, we won’t be where we are today. We thought about it, what if all of these is consolidated into one solution – compliance, banking, customer management, KYC, and global payouts? That’s exactly what we’ve built. So, with one single API, you can get everything to launch a payment company.
Q: Why infrastructure and not just a money transfer company?
Tomisin: Because I believe this is the impact side of things. Now, if I were to run a money transfer company, I would solve some problems. But I won’t solve the bigger picture. Because I’m a small company and I don’t have the money to even do the things that I can do.
And by the way, what we built is far robust. I can say that confidently. But we need a lot of money to push it. We are the only platform where you can send money in three ways, at least in Canada. You can send money the traditional way, you can send money on every other platform, you can connect with an individual and chat and negotiate and post your rate. You can even connect with wholesale currency vendors who are operating offline, we’ve built a solution for them to come online on onboard their customers with with our KYC tool, and you can also connect to our customers.
There’s nothing like that yet in Canada as we speak, but even at that, we need a lot of money to push the solution. And I wasn’t going to go look for crazy investors that would bring that money down. Yes. We have to make money for investors, but then we would end up being like the others.
But what if we provide a platform that can help several money transfer companies. Now, they don’t need to think about the costs they would incur every month because now it’s been reduced by at least 85%. Now we are able to offer good rates to companies because they’re not to individuals, because now they don’t have all these plenty costs.
It solves bigger problems. You can build remittance on it. Now we have agricultural commodity, trading companies. We have international student recruitment. We have, you know, business services that are able to literally embed payments in their platform, whether as a money transfer, or a regular business. We can make it happen.
So no matter what kind of payment solution you need, whether it’s for e-commerce, service delivery, international money transfer, or even just collecting fees, you can come to us.
So think of Shopify or payment companies.
Q: In terms of funding, what level of funding have you raised?
Tomisin: I haven’t raised funding. FiatMatch was built completely bootstrapped. So I have friends that are saying, ‘Dude, what’s wrong with you? People who don’t even have a product are raising crazy amount of money.’
But because I have done things traditionally, like built businesses from scratch, I want to get to a point where I can confidently tell an investor that when you come to us, you are not losing.
There’s no chance on earth that you can lose money because right now our platform is completely built. The infrastructure to do all of those things that I told you is already built. Right? So we saved you that. Is it working? Yes, it’s working.
Now we want to scale and take on the market. Yes, we need money. Now I’m starting to think, okay, now we need to raise money and make some noise.
And then we have the strategy. I love strategy. Sometimes as founders, we think it is money we need to do some things. Whereas when you get that money, you are going to go pay for some things, right? So those things you need to pay for, can you get them through strategic partnerships?
So let me break it down.
I need a global paying payments provider, like payouts provider. Now, if I got a partner now, I’ll probably pay minimum payments monthly. At the scale I want to do maybe $10,000 or $20,000. So how I look at it is, these big companies that can provide that, they must have something. Some of them must have something that they’re lacking. Can I fill that gap for them? So you know how you’re giving a big company that is big in certain regions, access to the North American region, and they are giving you access to the world. You need a lot of money to do that.
But if you can find those types of partnerships that can help you along the journey, right? It’s a win-win. So that’s how we have built from scratch. You know, I had two co-founders when we started. They jumped ship, I lost money.
And their reason was that, there’s no way we can raise money to do this. If you wanted to get a license with New York alone, you need 500,000k in shorty bonds. So we were like, it’s not realistic. We’re not gonna make money. But I thought to myself, I love strategy. It’s my strength. What if I found companies that already have licenses and I can leverage the license, be underneath them.
At the end of the day, I’m bringing transactions to them. Right? So I like to play the strategy game where I am thinking of the bigger picture. You know how flutterwave grew, primarily because they had customers like Uber. So think of that model where, okay, I could go look for money to go do crazy amount of marketing, but what if I start with one big company.
So these are the things that have helped us get here. Of course, I’ve spent a lot of money. I mean, at this point, over 400, 000 dollars on the business. Like my life savings, everything has been poured into FiatMatch because I believe we can build a solution that can outlast us.
Q: How long did it take to build FiatMatch?
Tomisin: We incorporated in 2021 but didn’t build anything until late 2022. First, we researched heavily into the World Bank archives, and industry case studies to get more information and understand what the the problem is.
And last year we conducted customer research, talking to a lot of remittance companies, payments companies to see what their challenges are before we built anything.
We launched officially in January 2024, and companies are already integrating our tech.
Q: Your platform claims global capabilities. So are you saying the current payment infrastructure can cater to businesses in any part of the world?
Tomisin: Absolutely. We have licenses where needed and partnerships elsewhere. A huge company in Asia, Middle East, and Africa is leveraging us to enter the North American market. Our tech is adaptable, and we’re working with fintech dev agencies globally.
So now there are several FinTech development agencies that are coming to us to say, can we use your solution as the infrastructure? So we’ll build the frontend and we’ll use your solution as the backend. Right? So our solution is not limited to a location. If tomorrow we raise like crazy amount of money and we get licenses in every country, we can deploy the technology anywhere.
Q: So right now you have MSB license. You have a MSB license registered with fintrack ? What other licenses do you own to operate in Canada?
Tomisin: We’ve registered under the Retail Payment Activities Act (RPAA) as required, and everyone will receive a response by September. The Bank of Canada is starting to regulate Money Services Businesses (MSBs), so we’re preparing for the new regulatory changes.
For now, the only licenses we need are the MSB license and RPAA registration. We’re not planning to offer services like lending, so no additional licenses are needed at this time.
As a technology and infrastructure provider, our licensing requirements are limited. However, the businesses that use our platform may need to obtain their own licenses depending on the services they offer.
Q: So what about anti-money laundering? How does your platform cater to to that?
Tomisin: One of the reasons it took us a while to launch is because, as I always tell my partners, I don’t want to go to jail. So, we made sure to get everything right from the start.
We joined a startup program that offered credits to use their system, and they’ve been incredibly supportive. We also work with another partner that handles KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and transaction monitoring
Most companies usually use just one system to handle these processes, we use two. Some of the biggest companies don’t even go that far.
I’ve become very knowledgeable in compliance myself. I completed a postgraduate degree last year in Fraud and Financial Management, an 11-month program that gave me a lot of insight into compliance.
While most CEOs of remittance or payment companies just hire someone else to handle this, I took the time to understand it myself. That’s why we now have a very strong compliance system in place.
Q: So based on your experience, what advice would you give to ambitious founders aiming to build impactful, sustainable ventures in FinTech or high growth areas?
Tomisin: First, you need to identify what drives you, your “why.” There will be moments of personal struggle and pain when you’ll question why you’re putting yourself through it. That’s when your purpose becomes your anchor.
At one point, my wife asked if I would accept a job offer, I said no, because I’m committed to the path I’ve chosen. Founding something meaningful is far from glamorous, and it’s not about flexibility, it’s about hard work and consistency.
Secondly, be ready to apply yourself fully. I’ve learned a bit about legal processes, which helped me secure our MSB license without external help, something others pay a lot for. You must be willing to push through challenges, especially when funds are limited.
Thirdly, surround yourself with people who have walked the path, peer mentors and fellow founders who challenge and support you. I constantly bounce ideas off others and learn from them. Stay curious and informed about your industry. I keep tabs on all competitors, study their apps, and know what they’re doing, sometimes even before others point them out.
In short,
Know your industry, in and out. Be ready to apply yourself, talk to people, leverage a community. And then, I mean, the sky is the limit. Money is a byproduct of all of those things. If it’s for the money, you make the money, but you have to do the work.
Final Thoughts
Tomisin’s journey reminds us that purpose, resilience, and strategy can take you farther than capital alone. Starting with bootstrapped ventures, he’s created products that help others, proving what’s possible when innovation meets empathy.
He’s built systems designed to last, designed to scale, and most importantly, designed to serve.
