Control Mobile

Control Mobile Inc., founded in 2013 by Kathryn Loewen, emerged from Vancouver as a financial technology company focused on payment analytics. Loewen, with 15 years of experience in the payments and finance sector at major companies like Citigroup, SAP, Apple, and Toyota, identified a crucial gap in the market for business-to-business (B2B) payment management tools. She holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Commerce, which provided a strong foundation for her entrepreneurial venture.

The company's core product was a mobile application designed to give merchants a centralized view of their payment operations. It allowed business owners to monitor transactions in real-time, providing crucial analytics and alerts for activities such as chargebacks and potential fraud, directly from their mobile devices. This enabled clients to make swift, informed decisions regardless of their physical location. The business model was subscription-based, following a 14-day free trial, targeting the B2B market rather than relying on user acquisition alone for revenue. Control's platform was engineered to integrate with major payment processors, initially focusing on Stripe's open API and later expanding to include partnerships with PayPal and Visa.

A significant milestone was achieved in June 2015 when Control secured $1.5 million in seed funding, co-led by Vanedge Capital and BDC Capital. This capital was earmarked for expanding the platform's capabilities to offer deeper business analytics and to grow its marketing and business development teams. By August 2015, the company announced a partnership with PayPal to develop a beta version of its app for PayPal merchants. However, the company's trajectory was altered when, according to a 2019 lawsuit filed by Loewen, investors allegedly pushed the company into receivership in 2017, leading to a foreclosure sale of its assets and intellectual property.

Keywords: payment analytics, mobile payments, financial technology, Kathryn Loewen, B2B payment tools, real-time transaction monitoring, fraud alerts, chargeback management, Stripe integration, PayPal partnership, subscription model, venture capital, payment data visualization, merchant tools, business intelligence platform