Canadian Public policy expert concerned Visa and Mastercard are monopolizing transactions

By Joshua Santos
Published: September 02, 2025 


Vass Bednar, Managing Director at Canadian SHIELD Institute for Public Policy, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the growing power of credit card giants.

Credit card companies offer a convenient way to facilitate payments between consumers and merchants, but a public policy expert is concerned the two biggest players in the space are extending their power as global regulators, censoring content, influencing markets and sparking international disputes.

Vass Bednar, managing director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute warns the federal government should be ready for pushback from financial service corporations as Ottawa attempts to reclaim digital sovereignty in an effort to reduce reliance on U.S. infrastructure.

“People are talking about digital sovereignty in big ways and small ways,” Bednar told BNN Bloomberg in a Tuesday interview. “I think it’s something we need to make more tangible and kind of more real.”

She highlighted a case where Visa, Mastercard and other payment processers stopped facilitating financial transactions from gaming platforms after an Australian advocacy group pressured the financial giants to remove games that featured explicit content. The case highlighted the power financial institutions have when a widely accessible payment platform cuts ties with merchants.Latest updates on company news here

“I actually have no problem with content moderation and content regulations,” Bednar said. “I just think it’s interesting that it’s coming from these payment service platforms instead of governments.”

She said she noticed gaming companies express concern on social media that the standard would be set for financial firms to go after them.

“What mechanisms do we have to report these elements?” said Bednar. “Was it kind of arbitrary? Is that a risk? I mean, that’s just, it’s one form of power that they exerted recently.”

She also referenced a program from Brazil’s central bank; Pix, an instant no-fee payment system used by three quarters of Brazilians in four years. Bednar argued the program undercuts American corporations, such as Visa and Mastercard’s high-cost models with merchants passing high swipe fees to consumers.

“There are lots of ways to pay for things,” said Bednar. “It’s not just Visa and Mastercard, by any means, but they have set a norm of sorts in terms of facilitating credit card payments and the amount that they take on the business end for the privilege and the benefit of accessing their infrastructure for payments, for smaller firms can be close to make or break.”

The program offers instant, free transfers between bank accounts, mobile apps and even street vendors, using QR codes. Surging consumer demand for real-time, seamless, and cost-effective transactions has catapulted Pix, other account-based transfers, and debit cards to record adoption rates, establishing them as the fastest-growing payment methods for purchases in emerging markets, according to EBANX’s Beyond Borders 2025 study.

The U.S. Trade Representative meanwhile launched an investigation into the Brazilian government to determine whether the country’s payment services pose a ‘discriminatory’ barrier to U.S. commerce.

“Are we seeing the U.S. kind of include Pix in that investigation as a way to protect Visa and Mastercard and say there’s an alternative, there’s more competition, which people are always saying that we need,” said Bednar. “Easier said than done. How does that affect Brazil’s sovereignty, their ability to build something new that is a competitor?”

Canada is developing a program like Pix. The Real-Time Rail (RTR) will allow Canadians to send and receive payments in real-time 24/7, 365 days a year. “As Canada continues with its Real-Time Rail, or maybe other innovations, should we expect to be punished through the U.S. administration, through trade leavers, for daring to either assert our ability to build a new competitor, or just having a successful company that’s here that challenges that U.S. dominance,” said Bednar.

The RTR will be established by Payments Canada under the Department of Canada and Bank of Canada. It will provide businesses and individuals with greater payment flexibility rather than relying on monopolized financial firms.


Joshua Santos
Journalist, BNNBloomberg.ca