Royal Bank of Canada and BMO Financial Group will sell their jointly owned payments processor, Moneris, to Francisco Partners, a US technology-focused private equity firm, for roughly C$2 billion in cash. The banks will split the proceeds evenly.
Moneris has operated as an RBC-BMO joint venture since it was founded in December 2000, growing into one of Canada’s largest payment processors — handling roughly one in three business transactions in the country and serving more than 325,000 points of commerce.
RBC expects to book an after-tax gain of about C$475 million once the deal closes, which is expected by the end of the first quarter of the banks’ 2027 fiscal year, pending regulatory approval. Jeff Sloan, the former CEO of Global Payments, will join Moneris as chairman as part of the transaction.
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Both banks will enter new exclusive, long-term customer referral arrangements with Moneris once the sale closes. Moneris CEO James Hicks told Reuters the company’s ties to both banks “extend well beyond ownership.”
RBC’s Sean Amato-Gauci, group head of commercial banking, said in the banks’ joint announcement that Moneris has “played a central role in enabling Canadian businesses to modernize and scale.”
The sale continues a trend of banks offloading payments units as digitization forces constant, costly technology investment to stay competitive — TD took a similar step recently, folding part of its merchant-processing business into a partnership with Fiserv.
Reuters first reported RBC and BMO were exploring a Moneris sale about a year ago, in a deal that could value the business around $2 billion — a price that held up almost exactly once the deal actually got done.
The deal still needs clearance under two federal regimes: the Competition Act and Canada’s Retail Payment Activities Act, the newer of the two, which is administered by the Bank of Canada and built specifically to oversee payment service providers like Moneris.
