A small business advocacy group has called out Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney for his involvement with a payment processor known for allegedly predatory practices.
The company in question is Stripe, an Irish-American multinational corporation that provides financial and software services for payment processing. It’s also the world’s largest privately-owned fintech company valued at over $70 billion last year.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses already had issues with the company for evading Canadian laws to pass on credit card savings to small businesses using its service, something the Government of Canada requires merchant processors to do.
“As the Liberal leadership race begins, I note an outstanding issue for small business owners with one of the leading potential candidates,” wrote Dan Kelly, president of the CFIB in a post to X on Tuesday.
“Unless something has changed in the last few days, Mr. Carney serves on the board of @stripe – a multinational firm that processes credit card transactions. Currently, Stripe stands in open defiance of Government of Canada rules requiring card processors to pass on recent Visa/Mastercard savings to small businesses.”
Carney, who previously served as the governor to both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, joined Stripe’s board of directors in 2021 and held the position until entering the Liberal leadership race on Thursday.
His campaign did not respond to True North’s request for comment.
Carney simultaneously resigned as chair of the board of Bloomberg LP, a financial data and media company run by billionaire Michael Bloomberg as well as serving on the advisory board for investment firm PIMCO.
Additionally, Carney held the position of UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero but stepped down from those positions as well.
“All of those roles, I resigned today,” Carney told reporters on Thursday during his campaign launch announcement. “Just to be clear, I resigned all my roles, cut all my ties. I am all in.”
Because Carney is a candidate running without a seat in the House of Commons, he is not subjected to the same conflict-of-interest rules as those who are elected.
While he still faces some outstanding conflict-of-interest issues, Carney said he would fully comply with the rules required of cabinet ministers and MPs should he become the next Liberal leader.
For the time being, Carney said that he is a “citizen that is running for a position,” but “will absolutely proactively engage and follow” all rules once leader.
The details of Carney’s finances for serving in those various corporate roles will not be made public as they are private companies.
However, as Kelly pointed out in his statement the federal government pledged to take action with such exploitative practices engaged in by companies like Stripe as part of its Fall Economic Statement.
“Some small businesses are unable to benefit from savings due to the unreasonably high merchant fees charged by certain payment processors. Specifically, some payment processors are charging flat-fees that do not pass on the savings from our deals to small businesses,” it reads.
“To ensure small businesses benefit from lower credit card fees, the 2024 Fall Economic Statement announces the government is considering legislative measures to compel payment processors to fully pass credit card transaction fee savings on to small businesses.”
The Department of Finance did not respond to True North’s request for comment and Carney has made no mention of whether he would follow through with Ottawa’s pledge if elected as prime minister.
“Stripe has decided to keep the government negotiated savings for itself, rather than passing them on to small business owners,” said Kelly. “This issue needs to be resolved.”
Those are no small savings either considering Stripe processed $1 trillion in payments in 2023, a 25% increase from the year before when it processed $817 billion.
