Serving Vancouver businesses whose customers don’t all speak English

What the census says about your counter

The 2021 Census counted 274,365 residents of the City of Vancouver — 42.2% — as born outside Canada, and 41.8% across the wider metropolitan area. Chinese languages are the largest non-official group at roughly 162,000 speakers, and Punjabi accounts for about 73,000, concentrated in Surrey and Burnaby. China, the Philippines and Hong Kong are the three most common places of birth. A till in Richmond or on Scott Road serves that mix every day, and the awkward moments are rarely about the card — they are about the question nobody could ask.

We sell the payment side plainly: countertop and wireless terminals, POS from Clover, Elavon or Nuvei, tap and chip handled properly, and a free review of a recent processing statement that shows the effective rate rather than the advertised one. RKP Atlantic Business Services has done this for Canadian merchants for over a decade, and a business in Burnaby gets the same reading of a statement as one in Moncton.

The part that is different is Omnilo, our own live-chat product. A customer types in Punjabi; it arrives in your language. You answer in yours; it arrives in theirs. That runs in real time across 130+ languages and is a separate subscription from the payment account, not a bundled extra we are quietly charging you for. Phone support is English and French only — we would rather say that plainly than advertise a Punjabi phone line we cannot staff.