One of Canada's biggest payment processors is set to be sold to a United States private equity firm, in a deal that has raised concerns about who could gain access to Canadians' financial data. Moneris handles roughly one in three payment transactions across the country, making it a critical piece of the systems Canadians rely on every day.
The buyer is Francisco Partners, a United States private equity firm. Moneris is currently owned by two of Canada's largest banks, the Royal Bank of Canada and the Bank of Montreal, which are selling the payment processor in the transaction.
The deal is valued at roughly two billion dollars. It is still subject to regulatory approval, meaning the sale cannot close until Canadian authorities have reviewed and cleared it.
The scale of Moneris is central to why the sale has drawn attention. Because the company is responsible for about one in three payment transactions across Canada, the deal would place a large share of the country's everyday payment infrastructure under American ownership.
That prospect has raised concerns about Canadians' financial data, and specifically about who could potentially access it once the processor is owned by a US firm. The worry centres not only on the transactions themselves but on the detailed picture they can paint.
The sale has also put a spotlight on Canada's digital sovereignty and the broader question of who controls the systems that Canadians rely on. For critics, the case is less about a single company and more about how much of the country's financial plumbing should sit in foreign hands.
Observers point out that Moneris was at the centre of a Supreme Court of Canada case in 2024, in which the court concluded that Canadians have a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to their IP address. That ruling underlined how much can be learned from payment data, from commerce patterns and consumer confidence to the popularity of products and the geographies where people spend, all of which sharpens the questions now being asked about the deal.