Introducing
SONA
SONA means ‘happy’ in Gaelic and that’s the driving force behind everything we do: we want contented customers. Our ambition is not to be the biggest payments systems provider in North America; it’s to be the most highly respected. Everyone at SONA has different skills and expertise to offer, but we all come to work each day united in our desire to put the customer’s needs first.
Our Philosophy
So much of corporate culture has become about simply ‘beating the other guy’. At SONA, we think differently.
Our core values are honesty, openness and accountability. We are unfailingly honest with each other, with our customers and with our partners. We are open to new ideas and experiences and to people from all walks of life. We know right from wrong and we make sure that each and every one of our decisions is morally as well as professionally justified.
The SONA values percolate through everything we do. They make us dream bigger and keep us focused on achieving something more important than just a number on the bottom line.
Our Story
SONA CEO Ryan O’Leary has been in the payments industry since 2005, working on the ‘big bank’ side before starting SONA in 2016. Ryan realized that many businesses saw their payments provider as a source of stress, frustration and expense, and that the merchant services industry was full of complicated contracts and hidden costs. He felt that a fresh approach was needed.
Ryan set out to create a payments provider that was transparent, ethical and reliable, with impeccable customer service and state-of-the-art technologies. He wanted his customers to see SONA as a trusted partner, not just a ‘cost of doing business’. Ryan negotiated a unique arrangement with the world’s leading global payment processors to control fees and pricing while offering their unrivalled processing power, security and equipment.
Since 2016, SONA has delivered pricing certainty, competitive rates and high-quality service to an ever-growing base of happy customers, expanding operations across Canada and North America. Despite a game-changing policy of zero cancellation fees, SONA has one of the highest customer retention rates in the industry.