Good day,

It has come to our attention that there is a new competitor out in the marketplace who is aggressively targetting businesses with programs and service. This new group is called the Canadian Merchants Association.

In gathering information about this group since being notified, it has become apparent that part of this group's sales pitch is to ask merchants to submit statements and other documentation as a form of validation for review. In any situation, this is never a wise practice – providing information to an unknown party.

Further investigation indicates that this is a "third party" processor working on behalf of a US-based provider operating out of a call centre in the Montreal area.

If you find that your members are calling you about this, we would advise you to warn any merchant about submission of any documents (merchant or bank statements) to an entity that is unknown to them.

Also, besides varying rate offers which appear on this group's payment processing information, a merchant should be cautious about service and support from a provider with limited hours of operation (Mon to Fri, 9-5 - rather poor hours for retailers who work significantly more hours than that) and are foreign (US) based (all Canadian merchants are governed by domestic regulations).

And finally, forewarn anyone against dealing with an entity that does not have a physical presence or cannot represent themselves in person.