At a time when Canadian entrepreneurs and small-business owners are navigating both unprecedented opportunity and unprecedented digital risk, the question of trust has never been more urgent. That was the focus of a fireside chat during Canadian Business’s Evolution event, where Erin Elofson, president of Mastercard in Canada, and Eva Wong, co-founder and COO of Borrowell, sat down with magazine publisher Jason Maghanoy for a candid conversation on how innovation and trust must move in lockstep.

Part of the Mastercard Innovator in Residence series, the discussion addressed a central tension: small businesses need to innovate quickly to stay competitive, but innovation without security can erode customer confidence in an instant. All of this is necessary for Canada to continue to build a resilient, thriving economy. As Elofson put it, “Trust is the backbone of technology adoption.”

Trust as the Starting Point

Borrowell’s early years offered a vivid example of just how fragile that confidence can be. Wong admitted she underestimated the challenge of convincing Canadians to hand over sensitive data to a brand-new fintech company. Even the smallest details mattered: “If you can’t spell things correctly on your website, why am I going to give you my personal information?” 

The company’s breakthrough came when it launched free credit scores. Through this service, Borrowell was able to demonstrate its ability to keep sensitive information secure. The more businesses protect customer data and demonstrate reliability, the more room they have to experiment and grow. “Trust doesn’t slow innovation down; it enables it,” Wong said. 

Elofson believes what Borrowell had to prove, customer by customer, is at the heart of innovation across the entire economy, from fintechs on the leading edge of new technology, to main street small businesses exploring new digital tools. 

“If Canadians hesitate to embrace new technologies, the country risks stalling its own competitiveness,” Elofson argued. “For Canada to be innovative, it starts with being willing to adopt technology. But you won’t take that risk if you don’t trust it.”

More than half of small businesses face challenges in accessing affordable cybersecurity tools to keep their businesses safe. The same number simply can’t keep up with the rapidly changing technology relevant to their business, or even find reliable business resources and tools that will help them innovate.

For Mastercard, that means providing tools and resources that help remove uncertainty from digital adoption. The Mastercard Trust Centre is a hub that offers small businesses free, practical resources, from how-to guides to a Cybersecurity Assessment Tool that supports small-business owners in helping educate themselves on their risks in minutes.

This is in addition to the company’s Global Intelligence and Cyber Centre of Excellence in Vancouver—a technology hub focused on accelerating cybersecurity and developing solutions to keep payments in Canada and globally secure. Through the Centre, Mastercard has also invested more than $10 million in partnerships with academic institutions and non-profits across Canada to support this work. 

“We have a responsibility to collaborate and bring together different perspectives so that we remain on the front foot and able to see around the corner,” Elofson said.

Turning Cybersecurity into Action

Scale is what makes the stakes so high. Mastercard processes billions of transactions every day, and Elofson described how AI and machine learning now operate at the core of its defences, scanning for anomalies and flagging suspicious activity in real time.

“Provided we’re investing in the right technology—which we are—we make sure people can take advantage of innovation versus being taken advantage of,” she said.

When asked about what excites and worries them about the future, both leaders struck an optimistic note. Elofson pointed to AI-powered agents as a breakthrough that will help small businesses find new efficiencies and reach new customers. Her concern wasn’t about the technology itself, but whether people would resist it. “The only fear is that we don’t keep learning together,” she said.

Wong was equally hopeful about the potential for technology to help people across Canada manage their financial goals, from saving for emergencies to tackling long-term challenges like home ownership. But she cautioned that broader mistrust—in institutions, media and digital environments—could undermine those advances. “When you can’t trust what’s real, it undermines everything—and that’s what keeps me up at night,” she said.

The conversation landed on a shared truth: without trust, innovation never scales. Elofson made the case from the vantage point of a global technology leader, stressing Mastercard’s responsibility to keep Canada on the front foot of cybersecurity and innovation. “I really believe the good guys in technology will win. We’re very, very invested in that fight,” she said.

Wong’s perspective, rooted in the lived realities of consumers and entrepreneurs, underscored the same point: when trust is broken, so is growth. Both speakers left the audience with a clear takeaway: the future of Canadian business depends not only on embracing new tools but on ensuring those tools are secure, credible and built on confidence.

If you’re a small-business owner and unsure about how to start protecting your business or keep it secure, visit the Mastercard Trust Centre for educational resources and support, including the cybersecurity assessment tool, which will provide recommendations based on your responses. 

Methodology

The Mastercard survey was fielded in Q3 of 2025. Response data are derived from a nationally representative sample of Canadian adults (N = 2,000) plus an oversample of small business owners (n = 200). Data are weighted to produce national estimates. Margin of sampling error for nationally representative estimates (N = 2,000) is ±2.2 percentage points (95% CI); margin of sampling error for the small-business estimates (n = 200) is approximately ±6.9 percentage points (95% CI). When combined (N = 2,200), the margin of sampling error is approximately ±2.1 percentage points (95% CI).