Torys’ Payments and Cards Practice is a multidisciplinary group that advises clients on all aspects of the payments and cards industries. The most recent addition to the group is Benjamin Geva, an internationally recognized legal expert in payment and settlement systems who has published extensively in this field, including a treatise titled The Law of Electronic Funds Transfer. In addition, Blair Keefe and Benjamin Geva served as members of the Regulatory Advisory Group to the Task Force for the Future of Payments System Review in Canada in 2011, providing advice on regulatory and legal issues related to the payments industry.
Torys has played a leading role in many of the largest Canadian transactions in this area, and has assisted its clients opposite all of the leading card networks in implementing new technologies and business models. In assisting our clients to accomplish their business objectives, Torys draws on its top-ranked expertise and depth of resources covering a variety of disciplines, such as financial services regulation, commercial technology, intellectual property (especially trademarks), privacy, M&A, tax and competition law. The lawyers in this practice have extensive experience in advising clients on a wide range of matters, including financial services regulatory matters in the payments system and cards area (and on the various operating rules and regulations for card networks); structuring card network brand and co-brand arrangements; negotiating and drafting BIN/ICA servicing arrangements; acquiring and developing card and payment systems, and their outsourcing arrangements; advising on consumer protection provisions and cost-of-borrowing disclosure requirements; and providing M&A advice on the acquisition and divestiture of portfolios. We also have extensive dispute resolution expertise.
Representative Experience
- a Canadian chartered bank’s $8 billion acquisition of a credit card portfolio
- a Canadian chartered bank’s card loyalty program with a major credit card network, whereby the bank will become a Canadian dual issuer of credit cards
- a Canadian chartered bank’s five year agreement with a leading ATM manufacturer and service provider for the operations of the bank’s ATM network
- a Canadian chartered bank’s loyalty program with a leading online travel company
- a Canadian chartered bank’s network brand agreement with a major credit card network, whereby the bank becomes a Canadian dual issuer of credit cards
- a Canadian chartered bank’s agreement with a major credit card network for the implementation of a pre-paid debit card
- a Canadian chartered bank in its seven-year corporate and consumer Canadian credit card processing arrangements being outsourced to a leading credit card processing service provider; and subsequently, the U.S. affiliate of the Canadian bank in its corporate and consumer credit card processing arrangements with the same credit card processing services provider
- a municipal government entity in respect of its competitive procurement and outsourcing of an open-standard, digital fare collection payment system
- a Canadian chartered bank for development and operation of a person-to-person email payment system with CertaPay
- a Canadian chartered bank in an agreement with a global money transfer company for the offering of money-transfer services to the bank customers in Canada
- a major oil and gas corporation in its agreement with a major financial services provider for the outsourcing of the oil and gas corporation’s credit card business and for the outsourcing of its distributed processing services
- a Canadian chartered bank in the implementation of chip and PIN contactless technology
- a Canadian chartered bank in the acquisition of private label credit card portfolios, and the provision of private label credit card and loyalty programs to retailers
- a Canadian telecommunications company in connection with it tokenization strategy for credit card numbers and other personal information
- a Canadian chartered bank in connection with credentialling services for the federal government
- three Canadian chartered banks in connection with the Bank Act approval required to allow them to provide credentialling services