Under the good-news category, Vancouver-based GeoComply Solutions Inc., while opening their new offices in Toronto’s downtown west end Liberty Village neighborhood, announced they had relocated some of their employees who had been based in war-torn Ukraine.
The cybersecurity firm has an office in Kharkiv, second-largest city in Ukraine. In some news reports, GeoComply expressed frustration with the Canadian government in helping with immigration applications and other challenges in allowing their employees and their families immigrate to Canada.
Still, they overcame the obstacles and the employees made it to Toronto, rounding out a staff of more than 30 overall in the new location, all to support Ontario’s growing online-gaming market. GeoComply’s headquarters is in Vancouver, but also has an office in Montreal. In Toronto, staff will support various functions, including technology compliance and customer support.
The company provides fraud prevention and cybersecurity solutions that detect location fraud and help verify a user’s true digital identity. More specifically, their products are based on technologies developed for the online-gaming and sports-betting markets, and they count DraftKings, FanDuel and MGM as clients.
The company analyzes more than three billion transactions annually, worldwide.
“This is a landmark moment for our company as we approach 600 staff members globally,” said Anna Sainsbury, GeoComply’s CEO and co-founder. “We proudly support digital industries, but we cannot do that without boots on the ground. Our company seeks top-level talent to fill every role and we are so impressed with our growing Toronto team. They will drive our mission to instill confidence in every online interaction and deliver leading solutions and services to our customers.”
GeoComply is one of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies and earlier this year was named one of the “Top 10 Most Innovating Enterprise Companies of 2022” by Fast Company.
Ontario has a robust regulated igaming market, with 36 operators currently live in the province. Many operators are still working through their regulatory applications with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), which has been moving igaming operators and suppliers over to the regulated market. The AGCO confirmed that 17 additional operators have exited Ontario’s unregulated market and are working with the Commission, meaning the Ontario market will be expanding rapidly in the near future.
