--- title: Canada's Big Banks Are Handing Small-Business Payments to US Owners description: RBC and BMO are selling Moneris to US firm Francisco Partners for $2 billion, part of Canada's banks exiting small-business payment processing. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-08-25T11:47:09.763Z updated: 2026-08-25T11:47:09.773Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/canada-banks-exit-small-business-payments-moneris image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/canada-smb-payments-moneris-187539.webp categories: FinTech content_type: Analysis region: Canada publication: Sovereign Magazine schema_type: Article --- Canada's largest banks are stepping out of the business of processing card payments for small and mid-sized companies, and the buyers moving in are American. In August 2026, RBC and BMO agreed to sell Moneris, the payment processor they jointly own and one of the largest in the country, to the US private-equity firm Francisco Partners for $2 billion CAD. For the corner restaurant or the two-location retailer that runs its sales through Moneris, the terminal on the counter does not change this year. What changes is who owns it, sets its fees, and holds its transaction history. ## RBC and BMO Are Selling Moneris to Francisco Partners Under the agreement, RBC and BMO each take half of the $2 billion CAD proceeds, and both banks will refer their own customers exclusively to Moneris going forward. The deal is expected to close in early 2027, subject to regulatory approval. Francisco Partners already owns a string of payment-processing companies, and Moneris would join them as one of its largest. Moneris processes roughly one-third of Canadian card transactions across hundreds of thousands of merchant locations. Once the deal closes, that volume will be owned not by two of the country's largest banks but by a US buyout firm that specializes in running payments businesses. ## The Banks Have Been Backing Away From Merchant Services for Some Time The Moneris sale is the sharpest example of a change that has been underway for a while. In 2025, TD handed its merchant-services business to Fiserv, a large US payments firm, in a managed-services arrangement, another Canadian bank stepping back from the work of acquiring and processing merchant transactions. The retreat is a documented industry shift, driven by the rising cost and complexity of running a payments operation: fraud losses, compliance obligations, and the technology needed to keep pace with both. For the banks, merchant acquiring has become a demanding line of business to own outright. Selling or outsourcing it lets them keep the customer relationship, through referral deals like the one attached to Moneris, without carrying the operational weight. What that leaves behind is a market where the companies actually processing Canadian small-business payments increasingly answer to owners outside the country. ## A US Owner Would Hold Canadian Businesses' Payment Data Because Moneris would pass into US private-equity ownership, the deal raises a question the regulatory review will have to weigh: where the payment data of Canadian businesses ends up. A processor of that size carries an enormous record of who bought what, where, and when. Foreign ownership puts that data under a different set of corporate and legal jurisdictions, and that, rather than the price, is the part of the deal most likely to draw scrutiny before it closes. ## Independents Are Pitching the Small End on Transparent Pricing As the biggest bank-owned processor consolidates upward into US private equity and global-scale players, smaller independent processors are competing for the long tail of merchants underneath it. Several large global firms and a handful of domestic challengers already compete for these merchants on price and software. One of them, Calgary-based Helcim, just raised money on that pitch. The company closed a $53 million CAD Series C led by the Business Development Bank of Canada's Growth Venture Fund, with new investors Curql Collective, a fund backed by more than 160 North American credit unions, and Los Angeles-based Gold House Ventures. Returning backers Headline, Aquiline, Information Venture Partners, Vesey Ventures, Clocktower Ventures, and the Alberta Accelerate Fund also took part. The round lifts Helcim's valuation to $250 million CAD, up from $97 million at its 2024 Series B, and brings total equity raised to $100 million since its 2022 Series A. Helcim says it serves small and mid-sized businesses across North America and has crossed $150 million CAD in annual recurring revenue, grown to about 200 staff, and signed more than 22,000 active merchants in Canada and the US, with the company on track to process nearly $10 billion in annual payment volume. Its pitch rests on transparent, volume-based interchange-plus pricing in place of flat-rate fees, an open merchant platform for in-person and online sales, and its own end-to-end infrastructure, which it built after launching as a payments company in 2020 rather than reselling another processor's technology. In January 2026 it released an AI-powered Payment Extension that lets merchants integrate Helcim's processing into software they already run. Nic Beique, Helcim's founder and CEO, reads the moment as an opening. “There's a real void in the market right now,” Beique said. “Merchants are coming to Helcim faster than ever, looking for a modern alternative.” For the small merchants he is courting, the banks' exit widens the field of who might process their payments even as ownership at the top consolidates. ## FAQ **Q: Does anything change for a business that uses Moneris right now?** Not immediately. Moneris keeps running as it does today, and the sale is not expected to close until early 2027, after regulatory approval. What shifts at close is ownership: the processor passes from RBC and BMO to Francisco Partners, which will then set its pricing and direction, while the two banks keep steering their own customers to Moneris through referral deals. **Q: Who is Francisco Partners?** A US private-equity firm that already owns a string of payment-processing companies. Moneris would become one of the largest businesses in that payments portfolio once the deal closes, giving the firm a processor that handles a large share of Canadian card transactions. **Q: What is interchange-plus pricing?** It is a fee model that passes through the underlying card-network interchange cost and adds a defined, volume-based margin on top, which processors that use it present as more transparent than a single flat rate. Helcim is among the independents pitching small merchants on this approach. **Q: How does Helcim's size compare to Moneris?** They sit at very different scales. Helcim reports more than 22,000 active merchants and is on track to process nearly $10 billion in annual payment volume across Canada and the US. Moneris handles roughly one-third of all Canadian card transactions across hundreds of thousands of merchant locations, the large end of the market the independents sit beneath.