Canadian Fintech Affiliate: Blossom grows 50x through affiliates
Deep dive into Blossom Social's ambassador program, Google's market share declines & Jesse Abrams, Co-Founder, CEO Homewise, shares why he's all in on affiliates
Morning!
Welcome to the Canadian Fintech Affiliate newsletter, a monthly roundup of industry news, offer updates and conferences worth attending for Canadian affiliate marketers.
In today’s email:
What’s trending: Google’s search market share declines, Blossom Social drives 50x growth through their affiliate program leading to $3.5 mill capital raise.
Interview - Jesse Abrams, Co-Founder, CEO Homewise shares how he leverages affiliates to grow his mortgage business
Best conferences to attend in May & June
Jobs: Roles at Moomoo, Manulife, Betstamp and 10+ others.
Today’s reading time is 6 minutes.
Opinions expressed are my own*
Affiliate Tip
Let your partners promote your product in their own voice — the less your offer feels like an ad, the higher your conversion rate. Give affiliates the freedom to integrate your brand naturally and you’ll build real trust (and real traction).
🤑 What’s Trending
Google’s market share drops below 90%
In court testimony, Apple's SVP of Services, Eddy Cue, said that Google searches on Safari declined for the first time in April. Something that has “never happened in 22 years.”
He revealed that Apple is exploring integrating AI search features directly into Safari - citing Perplexity, OpenAI, and Anthropic as potential partners by name.
Will Google Search disappear? No.
I think over the next few years Google search evolve into a chat based platform like ChatGPT.
Blossom grows 50x through affiliates
Blossom Social closed a $3.1 million round in April — in a matter of days. I first wrote about them back in February 2024 when LOI Ventures announced another $300,000 investment, bringing Blossom’s total funding to about $1.4 million at the time. That was the first I’d heard of them, but I’ve been tracking them ever since.
What initially caught my eye was how similar their platform felt to eToro. The DIY investing space has been booming for years — Wealthsimple led the fintech revolution in Canada, and Questrade’s relentless ads drilled the dangers of high-fee mutual funds into millennials' minds a decade ago.
Newer entrants like Moomoo and Webull have only added to the momentum. Blossom bridges it all together by offering a copy trading or social trading app where user link their accounts to show their holdings, just like eToro.
But what stood out even more was a detail buried in Blossom’s investor prospectus: they’ve grown their user base 50x in just two years. How? Affiliates.
“Blossom’s ambassadors are instead paid for each download they drive, and are given the creative freedom to promote Blossom in their content how they best see fit. Since Blossom is a social app, it fits very organically into the creator’s regular content (i.e., with a call-to-action at the end to ‘see what they’re investing in on Blossom’).”
Reading that, I knew immediately — these guys get it.
This is a strategy built by a team that understands affiliate marketing. And more importantly, it’s working because they’ve done it right:
They’re partnering with creators who have high-intent audiences that trust them.
The app fits naturally into their existing content, enhancing transparency without feeling like an ad.
They’re giving affiliates the freedom to use their own voice and style, which keeps promotions feeling genuine — and that authenticity drives higher conversion rates.
The real unlock here? Blossom’s founders are financial influencers themselves.
They know exactly what creators need to make a promotion feel natural — because they’ve been on the other side of the table. They built an app that solves a pain point for influencers (being able to share real, verified portfolios with their audience) and then designed a growth engine around it.
They didn’t just launch an affiliate program — they built a platform for affiliates, where their success is directly tied to the creators’ success.
The economics make sense, too. Their customer acquisition cost on Meta is about $6 based on their monthly ad spend and monthly installs, so it’s safe to assume they're offering somewhere around from $5-$10 per install to affiliates — a win-win structure that scales.
Lesson for brands
If you want affiliates to scale your growth, build a product they’re proud to promote — and then get out of their way. Give them creative freedom, pay fairly, and think like a partner, not just an advertiser. Blossom’s 50x growth is proof that when you align incentives and audience fit, affiliates can outperform paid ads.
That growth wasn’t just about downloads — it gave Blossom the traction and momentum they needed to close their latest $3.1M raise in a matter of days.
I’m excited to watch how Blossom’s next phase of growth plays out — there’s a lot brands can learn from them.
🍸Conferences
Upcoming conferences worth checking out:
Consensus - May 14-16, 2025 | Toronto, Canada
Billed as ‘The Super Bowl of Blockchain, the World Cup of Web3.
Canadian Finance Summit - June 2, 2025 | Toronto, Canada
Join Tal Schwartz and the CLA for their premier event bringing together 600+ financial institutions, vendors and publishers to chat BaaS, AI, Risk, Fraud, InsurTech and more.
💼 Affiliate Marketing Jobs
Looking for a job board specifically for affiliate marketing roles in Canada?
Check it out 👉 affiliate-marketing-jobs.com
See roles from Moomoo, Manulife, Betstamp and 10+ others.
If you're hiring in the affiliate space, you can post a job for free. Get started👉 here.
🎙️ Interview with Jesse Abrams, Co-Founder, CEO Homewise
Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity and length.
Cameron: Tell us who you are and your current role.
Jesse: I’m Jesse Abrams, Co-Founder and CEO of Homewise. We’re a digital mortgage platform focused on simplifying the mortgage process for Canadians by using technology to improve transparency, speed, and access to the best possible rates and mortgage products.
Cameron: What’s your experience in affiliate marketing?
Jesse: We didn’t start as an affiliate-driven company. In our early days, we leaned on paid social and search. But over time, as those channels became more expensive and less scalable, we saw affiliate marketing as a more efficient and sustainable way to grow. Four years ago, partnerships were about 10% of our business. Today, they’re closer to 75–80%. We built a tech stack around embedded experiences and APIs, and started working with partners like Borrowell and others in the financial services space to deeply integrate our product into their user journeys.
Cameron: What was your 'baptism by fire' moment?
Jesse: Definitely those early partnerships where we weren’t ready. I remember in 2019, we were four guys in a basement pitching to a massive real estate company—and we blew it. We didn’t deliver, we weren’t ready, and the leads went nowhere. It taught us not to overpromise and to be honest about where we are in our journey. That lesson has shaped how we qualify partners and how we prep before any major launch.
Cameron: What was your 'aha' moment that led you to focus on the affiliate channel?
Jesse: Our first major partnership with Borrowell was eye-opening. It started with a simple branded linkout and evolved into a deep tech integration. We realized pretty quickly that the affiliate model scaled better, delivered more qualified traffic, and gave us data and feedback loops we never got from paid media. It was like paid media was death by a thousand cuts, while affiliate gave us long-term compounding growth. That shift in thinking, combined with our ability to build tech our partners actually wanted, was the turning point.
Cameron: What do you look for in a new affiliate partner?
Jesse: We want partners who are fully committed—not just dipping their toe in. This means shared values, growth mindset, and the willingness to invest in the relationship.We’ve been burned by partners who promised the world, got us to build custom tech, and then delivered very poor lead flow from their end. So now, we look for signs of alignment, operational capacity, and mutual patience—especially in the mortgage space, where conversions can take months.
Four years ago, partnerships were about 10% of our business. Today, they’re closer to 75–80%. We built a tech stack around embedded experiences and APIs, and started working with partners like Borrowell and others in the financial services space to deeply integrate our product into their user journeys.
Cameron: Describe your ideal traffic partner?
Jesse: They get mortgages. They understand it’s not a quick funnel—pre-approvals today might close in six months. They’re also adding value to their audience by embedding us in a way that makes sense. A partner with SEO traffic might need a rate aggregator, while a home builder just needs a simple pre-qual form. Ideal partners are strategic, understand their audience, and want to create a seamless experience.
Cameron: What levers do you pull to scale with a partner?
Jesse: We’re flexible. Rev share is common for us, but we’ll increase payouts, offer flat fees, or build exclusive tools if it makes sense. The key is understanding what drives that partner’s performance and giving them what they need—whether that’s faster integrations, better tech, or improved user flows. We also try to match that effort with transparency on our side. If a partner sends volume but it’s poor quality, we talk about it. It’s always a two-way street.
Cameron: How important is attribution tracking for your partners?
Jesse: It’s critical. We’ve built robust tracking systems for all our integrations—linkouts, embeds, APIs—because we know partners want visibility. We’re not a black box. We share data, listen to feedback, and make adjustments. It’s a core differentiator for us, especially with partners who are used to flying blind with other providers.
Cameron: What would you like to see change in the industry?
Jesse: More investment from Canadian banks in meaningful tech partnerships. In the US, banks are acquiring and integrating fintechs left and right. Here, it’s still too slow. We also need more affiliate marketers to think beyond credit cards. If you're acquiring users, ask what’s next. Can they graduate into a mortgage or insurance customer? That lifecycle thinking is where the real value is—and not enough people are playing that long game.
Cameron: Anything you’d like to share?
Jesse: We’re always looking for aligned partners—especially ones who are serious about adding mortgage into their value chain. Whether you're in finance, real estate, or adjacent categories, let’s talk.
You can find us at thinkhomewise.com, or feel free to connect with me directly on LinkedIn.
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