RBC and BMO Sell Moneris to US Firm for Two Billion Dollars

Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal announced on August 10, 2026 that they had agreed to sell Moneris Solutions Corporation, the payments processor they have jointly owned for a quarter century, to the American private equity firm Francisco Partners for approximately $2 billion in cash, split evenly between the two banks, according to BMO’s own newsroom statement. Moneris handles roughly one in three transactions across Canada at more than 325,000 points of commerce, a scale that makes it the country’s largest merchant payments processor and, according to that same statement, the last such business still owned by a Big Six bank.

Bloomberg reported the deal at the same headline value, describing it as a $1.4 billion transaction in US dollar terms, and noted that both banks expect to book substantial gains on the sale, according to Bloomberg’s report. BMO’s own disclosure states it expects an after-tax gain of about $600 million and a roughly 15 basis point improvement to its capital ratio, framing the transaction primarily as a balance sheet event rather than a strategic retreat, according to the BMO announcement.

As part of the deal, Jeff Sloan, the former president and chief executive of Global Payments Inc., will join Moneris as chairman, according to a report from CityNews Toronto, which also confirmed that BMO and RBC will each retain a long-term customer referral arrangement with Moneris after closing. The sale is subject to review under the Retail Payment Activities Act and clearance under the Competition Act, with closing expected by the end of the first quarter of the banks’ 2027 fiscal year, according to the same CityNews report and BMO’s statement.

A Sovereignty Question Regulators Rarely Ask

The independent newsletter Canadian Returnee framed the sale bluntly as the last of the Big Five stepping back from owning Canadian payments infrastructure, arguing that the transaction hands foreign private capital control over a system that processes a third of the country’s commerce, according to Canadian Returnee’s newsletter dated September 20, 2026. That framing sits uneasily alongside the corporate language used by the banks themselves, which described the sale as advancing Moneris’ commitment to Canadian commerce and as a routine, positive step for both companies, according to the BMO release.

The timing raises questions that go beyond the financial mechanics of the deal. Canadian officials have spent much of the past year emphasizing the need to treat payments as national infrastructure and to reduce dependence on American systems amid trade tension with Washington. Whether the Competition Bureau or the Bank of Canada’s new payments oversight regime will weigh those sovereignty considerations, rather than simply checking for competitive harm in the narrow economic sense, remains an open question that the regulatory process as currently structured does not appear designed to answer.