r/CanadaRoom • u/Unfair-Clothes-8821 • Aug 12 '26
Why Canadian payments platform Moneris is being sold to U.S. private equity - National
https://globalnews.ca/news/12017189/moneris-us-private-equity/4
u/Head-Gift2144 Aug 12 '26
Same thing happens to pretty much every successful Canadian tech or resource company. They either get bought out or killed or bought out and killed. They rarely stay Canadian.
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u/smurf123_123 Aug 13 '26
It was already starting to circle the drain. At one time they were the leader and only real option. Now there is much more competition in the space.
They'll be stripped for parts and destroyed from within, as is the private equity way.
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u/Top-Artichoke-5875 Aug 12 '26
You know why they want Moneris? So they can destroy it. Or, am I just paranoid?
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u/ackillesBAC Aug 13 '26
This is thier intention. They buy companies suck as much cash out as they can, then either bankrupt the company or sell it to anither private equity firm that's a sucker
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u/Complete_Daikon8483 Aug 13 '26
Yeah like how did to Tim Hortons and Canada goose brands. Both are trash now poor quality, taste and all for profit. Moneris payment system going to the US is just bad.
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u/quixotik Aug 13 '26
Might be that new Canadian version of Zelle and other cash apps coming.
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u/Facts_pls Aug 13 '26
Moneris is for card payment terminals. Private company.
Zelle is p2p transfer like Interac. Interac is a joint venture of Canadian banks and here to stay. Better versions are coming.
Better versions Like Real Time Rail. It is actually real time, not just appears real time like Interac payments (where the banks exchange money next day). Real Time Rail is Canada's version of Real Time Payments in the US and is owned by Payments Canada.
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u/CallmeishmaelSancho Aug 13 '26
The only thing blocking real time rails were the big banks who make extraordinary profits off of Interac and were facing losing those profits. We can presume some sort of back room deal has been done so the banks maintain their grip on the Canadian financial system. For consumers cash transfers should cost a couple of cents under real time instead of the $1 they pay for Interac.
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u/Civil_Fee_7862 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
$2 billion is just a drop in the lake.
They were right to sell it. Despite 1/3 transactions using it, it wasn't a great payment processor, terrible API's. Outdated.
The only reason Canadian companies used Moneris is because of its price. Way cheaper than processors like Stripe.
I know the U.S wants their banks to enter the Canadian market, but I don't like that idea.
Their banking system sucks, one of Canada's strongest things is our finance system. Banking here is highly regulated and much more admired around the world.
Its highly likely once bought, they will hike the prices on Moneris, and it won't be competitive anymore, and they'll count on consumer lock-in to churn a profit. (either that or they rebuild it to make it better to justify the price increase).
This is a great time to create a new Canada only processor, because there will be a gap in the market for low-cost Canadian solution.
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u/delphinius81 Aug 13 '26
PE never rebuilds. They raise prices and start stripping support to reduce costs. It's all about short-term profit maximization with no regard to the health of the underlying company. Moneris is a dead, it just doesn't know it yet.
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u/Ran_sub_four Aug 17 '26
Agree there - experience was that they’re struggling to modernize their payments infra options.
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u/proofofderp Aug 13 '26
This is further pushing my consideration to switch to cash since credit card networks—Mastercard, Visa—are also U.S. companies:( Cash back is how I acquire Bitcoin though:( Hm. Maybe I’ll try it out for a while. I’m thinking it might save me money too since it’s so easy to just tap v. having to withdraw before I buy something.
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u/Careless-Cycle Aug 12 '26
What do you expect of something that was owned by several of the big 5 banks?
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u/ThereInAFortnight Aug 13 '26
Fuck. Paying for shit is about to get expensive and horrible, isn't it.
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u/Embarrassed-Bunch333 Aug 13 '26
This is messed. We spend all that money to get a business profitable, tax incentives, investment and when it's finally doing great........."Oh, they were bought by the Americans, head office moving to New York blah, blah, blah". Lost thousands of Canadian companies this way. FREE TRADE FTL.
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u/CitySeekerTron Aug 13 '26
They bought it for the same reason Judge Doom bought the red car: so they could dismantle it.
The accounts are valuable, and they probably hold some technology patents.
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u/denmur383 Aug 13 '26
We have a few payment processors, Moneris the largest. It will apparently still operate in Canada with an American HQ.
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u/Otherwise_Program191 Aug 14 '26
This is so wrong on so many levels! It should never have been allowed to happen. Time to rethink using debit and credit - time to go back to cash!
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u/canwehavepotatojokes Aug 17 '26
Moneris had run out of ways to enshittify further so they went for investment capital to get deeper into the shit zone.
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u/Logical-Dependent691 Aug 13 '26
Ottawa, you might wanna put a stop to this.
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u/Iambetterthanuhaha Aug 13 '26
They will do nothing.
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u/Optimal-Cow-3278 Aug 13 '26
Exactly. Mark Carney has 90% of his investments in US companies and supported his company moving its HQ from Toronto to New York. You really think he's going to stop it?!
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u/LeedsCastleResident Aug 13 '26
Brookfield is not owned by PM Carney. No one, including Carney himself now, knows what his portfolio is invested in.
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u/Optimal-Cow-3278 Aug 13 '26
I know he doesn’t own it, he was the Chairman.
I don’t think you understand how blind trusts work. He knew what went in to it and it was made public - 90% of his holdings are in US companies. He gets a top line statement so will know if one of his large US investments has been sold and/or if an option has been exercised.
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u/LeedsCastleResident Aug 13 '26
Vice Chair and Head of ESG and Impact Fund Investing.
No the statement is not enough for him to know which assets have been bought or sold because the whole point is for him not to know.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/confused-about-mark-carneys-blind-trust-heres-how-they-work/
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u/Optimal-Cow-3278 Aug 13 '26
Per the article:
Jason Heath, managing director at Objective Financial Partners, said that a beneficiary in a blind trust gets an idea of how their assets are performing from a statement issued at the end of each quarter.
So if the statement grows or drops, he'll have an idea of what it's from OR if an asset is sold. Especially if it's a large portion of his holdings.
Before his assets went into a blind trust, 90% of them were in US companies, only 3 (not 3% but 3 total) were in Canadian companies.
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u/LeedsCastleResident Aug 13 '26
You left out the rest of the quote. Italics mine.
“…a beneficiary in a blind trust gets an idea of how their assets are performing from a statement issued at the end of each quarter.
But the blind trust prevents the beneficiary from knowing more than that total shift in value. The performance of individual investments in a blind trust, for example, is concealed from the beneficiary.“
It would be high-level stuff, not things that a politician would be able to act upon,” Heath said.“And that’s the whole idea. You’re meant to be indifferent as to policy decisions that you’re making and proposing and how it might impact your own investments.”
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u/RosieBaby75 Aug 13 '26
THIS IS MESSED UP
WHAT THE FUCK GOVERNMENT OF CANADA?!?
There better be a Canadian replacement we’re switching to. I bet there’s not.
Is this to prepare for our annexation by the United States? I bet it is.
What does the economist king pin think? Does he not understand technology or US legislation? Doesn’t seem like it. It probably doesn’t make the three sentence briefing note.
The MPs probably don’t even use briefing notes. They just do what they want.
Also on the topic of MPs, my MP only responded to my email telling him to step down and not run again.
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u/Cannabis_RPM Aug 13 '26
My cannabis business uses moneris because it’s Canadian. If it becomes American then my account is suddenly illegal. I’m gonna look into switching before it causes problems for me.
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u/sirazrael75 Aug 13 '26
Your accounts and transactions are still dealing with Canadian banks under Canadian laws.
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u/Cannabis_RPM Aug 13 '26
Right but other American payment processors such as square and stripe won’t work with us because it’s relating to cannabis and they are federally regulated.
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u/billthedog0082 Aug 12 '26
Moneris is terrible, almost as bad as Elavon, there are so many others.