Every fall, the Southern Alberta Business Hall of Fame brings together the region’s business and philanthropic community to honour men and women whose careers have shaped how Albertans work, invest, and give back. The 2024 class included Susan Anderson, a Calgary fintech entrepreneur whose decades-long career has changed how millions of people access their own money, and who has since turned her attention to helping the next wave of founders do the same.
Building DirectCash Into a Global Player
In 1997, Anderson and a co-founder launched DirectCash Payments Inc. with two employees and a plan to build out automated banking machine infrastructure. What started small grew steadily for two decades. By the time the publicly traded company was sold in January 2017, DirectCash had become the second largest ATM company in the world, generating revenue exceeding $400 million and employing 425 people across several countries. It stands as one of the more remarkable growth stories to come out of Calgary’s financial services sector, built by a founder who understood both the mechanics of a transaction and the patience required to scale a company internationally.
A Second Act in Banking and Investment
Anderson did not step back once DirectCash found its footing. In 2008, while still building the ATM business, she co-founded Digital Commerce Bank, a private Canadian chartered financial institution, and served as its founding President and CEO for more than seven years before moving into the role of Chair of the Board, a position she still holds. Alongside that work, she now leads Cannonball Capital Inc., her family office, which acts as an institutional investor in venture companies, private and public equities, and commercial real estate. She also chairs the board of Endeavor Canada, an organization that selects and mentors scale up entrepreneurs, effectively passing along the lessons she learned building DirectCash from a two-person operation into a global company.
Community, Recognition and Roots in Alberta
Anderson’s community involvement stretches well beyond the boardroom. She sits on the boards of the My First Bicycle Foundation, the Cannonball Foundation, Canada’s Sport Hall of Fame, and Digital Commerce Bank, and she serves on the strategic advisory board of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute as well as the President’s Advancement Council at the University of Alberta. Her honours include a 2010 Alumni Honour Award from the University of Alberta, recognition as one of Canada’s most powerful women by the Women’s Executive Network that same year, and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Prairies Region in 2005.
Anderson’s education tells part of the story of her drive. She graduated with distinction with a commerce degree from the University of Calgary in 1984, then earned a law degree from the University of Alberta in 1988, a combination of business instinct and legal training that has shaped her approach to every venture since. Away from the office, she is a mother of two grown sons and an avid traveller, hiker, golfer, and pickleball player, proof that the same drive she brought to building companies carries over into how she spends her time outside of work.
Taken together, the two chapters of Anderson’s career, building DirectCash from nothing and now backing the next generation of entrepreneurs through Cannonball Capital and Endeavor Canada, illustrate a through-line that runs across most of the Southern Alberta Business Hall of Fame’s laureates: an early willingness to bet on an unproven idea, followed by a later commitment to helping others do the same. Her work mentoring startup and scale up founders in particular reflects a career built as much on teaching as on building.
Her full laureate biography, including additional detail on her board work and honours, is available on the Southern Alberta Business Hall of Fame website, where she was recognized as part of the 2024 class of inductees for lifetime contributions to the region’s economy and community.
What does it take to turn a two-person startup into a company that spans the globe, and what will the next generation of Alberta entrepreneurs learn from Susan Anderson’s path?
