---
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)
updated: 2026-08-21T21:17:39.982Z
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 numerous payment-processing companies, so the sale adds one of Canada's biggest acquirers to a portfolio already full of payments businesses.

The scale is what makes the handover matter. Moneris processes roughly one-third of Canadian card transactions across hundreds of thousands of merchant locations. Once the deal closes, it 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 sale has raised questions in Canada about 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 question, 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. Competition at the small-business end is active rather than empty: large global firms already serve this market, and a handful of domestic challengers are working the same ground 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.” The shift he is selling into is real: the largest processing volumes are moving to US private equity and global firms, while independents like Helcim compete for the smaller merchants underneath. For those merchants, the banks' exit widens the field of who might process their payments even as ownership at the top consolidates.

## FAQ

**Q: Who is buying Moneris?**
Francisco Partners, a US private-equity firm that already owns numerous payment-processing companies, agreed in August 2026 to buy Moneris from RBC and BMO for $2 billion CAD. The deal is expected to close in early 2027, subject to regulatory approval.

**Q: Why are Canada's banks getting out of merchant services?**
Running a payments business has grown more expensive and complex, with rising costs tied to fraud, compliance, and technology. Selling or outsourcing merchant acquiring, as RBC and BMO are doing with Moneris and TD did with Fiserv in 2025, lets the banks keep their customer relationships through referral arrangements without carrying the operational load.

**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: What does the Moneris sale mean for Canadian businesses' payment data?**
Because Moneris handles roughly a third of Canadian card transactions and would pass to a US owner, the sale has raised questions in Canada about where that transaction data resides and under which jurisdiction it falls, a point likely to feature in the regulatory review before the deal closes.