Rotessa celebrates remarkable growth

Rotessa, a local payment software company, is marking 15 years in business.

What began as a side project grew into a software business serving over 3,000 clients across North America.

“We kind of by accident became a payments company,” said Greg Lepp, founder of Rotessa. “We added this as a secondary service and really wanted to focus on tuition payment plans but this had lots of attraction.”

Originally focused on tuition payment planning, the company expanded into a payment platform for small businesses.

Lepp said the company is like a bank but it’s more accessible and user-friendly for small businesses because of their online widget, support staff, and interface.

He built the company in July 2010 when he was working at Providence University College and Theological Seminary.

“I was the only person working sometimes,” said Lepp. “There were lots of doubts in the beginning that this was going to go.”

The software business began with 16 clients in its first year and continued to double after each year.

Lepp was the only employee at first and he was self-financing the business.

He said their original goal was 200 accounts, but now they’re starting to talk about how they get to 10,000.

Around five percent of Rotessa’s clients are from the U.S.

“I never dreamt it would become this,” said Lepp.

He said during the pandemic lots of daycares and gyms “went to zero” but a lot of other business started to shift to electronic payments after.

The past five years was a lot of growth for the business as many people shifted to electronic payments said Lepp.

He said Rotessa’s success is because of his local team and hiring new local graduates.

“There’s local talent that don’t want to go to Winnipeg to work, but they think they have to because there’s fewer tech jobs in Steinbach. So, they’ve been thrilled with Rotessa,” said Lepp.

There will be new payment services in 2026 for Rotessa’s clients.

“If a payment is done well, you shouldn’t notice them,” said Lepp.