RBC and BMO sell Moneris to Francisco Partners for $2 billion, ending 25-year joint venture

Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal, two of Canada’s Big Five banks, are stepping back from a business they built together a quarter-century ago. The two lenders have agreed to sell Moneris, the merchant payments joint venture they set up in 2000, to Francisco Partners, a US private equity firm, in a deal valuing the company at close to $2 billion.

Moneris is one of the largest commerce platforms in the country, connecting roughly 325,000 businesses to card and digital payment rails and touching close to a third of all transactions made in Canada. RBC expects to record an after-tax gain of about $475 million, and BMO around $600 million, once the transaction closes, which both banks said should be complete by the end of the first quarter of their 2027 fiscal year, pending regulatory sign-off. Neither lender expects the disposal to meaningfully change its earnings outlook going forward.

The deal aligns with other recent moves by Canadian banks to trim businesses that sit outside their main lending and deposit franchises, including BMO’s decision earlier this year to sell a majority stake in its transportation and equipment finance operations, and TD’s earlier decision to run its merchant business on Fiserv’s Clover platform and sell off part of its processing book to the US firm.

Even as ownership changes hands, RBC and BMO aren’t cutting ties completely. Both banks will enter into new exclusive, long-term referral arrangements with Moneris once the sale closes, continuing to route customers to the platform even though they’ll no longer own it. Jeff Sloan, who previously ran Global Payments, will take over as Moneris’ board chairman. Francisco Partners has experience acquiring payments and commerce technology firms, including Verifone, Hypercom, Paymetric, and PayLease.

There is a growing unease among Canadian payments executives and policy voices about how much of the country’s transaction infrastructure now sits with foreign owners. Moneris was one of the last major processors still anchored to Canadian bank ownership, following TD’s earlier exit from its own merchant processing book.

The transaction still needs to clear regulatory hurdles before it closes. But after 25 years, it seems likely that Moneris is leaving Canadian bank ownership, and its next chapter will be written from San Francisco.