Carney must disclose his assets in Stripe, call to pass along fee savings

At a time when small businesses need relief, the Liberal’s front runner has been curiously silent on an issue that could help them, but could cost him personally

It’s rumored that multi-billion dollar payment processor Stripe, an American-Irish company whose Board of Directors Liberal frontrunner Mark Carney served on, may be “going public” this year. To date, he hasn’t disclosed whether he still retains an interest in the company.

Last year, Conservatives pushed for the multi-billion dollar payment processor to stop pocketing savings from a policy designed to help Canadian small businesses get ahead. To date, no action has been taken by the Liberals, and Mark Carney, the Liberal’s leadership frontrunner, has been silent on the issue.

Could the reason for his silence be that he served on Stripe’s board, and his compensation package could include instruments that allow him to personally gain if Stripe doesn’t pass these savings along, particularly if the company is about to go public? Canadians don’t know, because he refuses to disclose his financial assets, as any elected public office holder would have to do.

Here’s my open letter to him, calling upon him to do the right thing.

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February 21, 2025

Dear Mr. Carney,

If you win the Liberal leadership race, Canada will soon find itself in the unusual situation of having a Prime Minister who has never held elected office. Outside of the obvious problems this would pose for the functioning of Parliament, it also raises different, equally troubling concerns related to your ability to influence policy that could enrich yourself at the expense of average Canadians.

Take, for example, your ties to Stripe, the multi-billion dollar Irish-American payment processing company that you have served as a board member while you concurrently served as a senior economic advisor to current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It has long been speculated that Stripe will ‘go public’ through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock. Big news on this from has ramped up in recent weeks. A news outlet recently listed Stripe as one of its ‘8 Upcoming IPOs to Watch in 2025,’ placing an estimated value of Stripe at $65 billion. Stripe has shown signs of preparing for an IPO by thinning its workforce by cutting staff, first with 1,000 workers fired – 14% of its workforce – and a further 300 fired just weeks ago. As an attentive member of Stripe’s Board of Directors, you are surely aware of all this.

At your campaign launch on January 16, you announced that you had resigned from all your board positions: Brookfield, Bloomberg, PIMCO, and Stripe. But you quite noticeably did not say that you divested all corporate interests or assets in the companies for which you held positions.

It is quite common for board directors to receive shares or other financial interests in the companies they represent. On this matter you have provided no details or accountability. Did your appointment to the Stripe board come with any sort of stock options for if/when the company IPOs, and do you currently maintain any personal financial interest in Stripe? An IPO with a $65 billion valuation could obviously be quite lucrative, either through immediate financial benefit or via deferred options. If an IPO is imminent, then is your potential payday imminent too? These should be easy questions for you to answer.

As a financial services company, Stripe is federally regulated, so it is even more important that you disclose any and all interests you hold.

Because you do not currently hold elected office, and because you have militantly refused to disclose your assets, you seem set on exploiting a loophole in Canada’s Conflict of Interest Act which would allow you to withhold details about your financial interests and any related potential conflicts from the public until after a general election. Under Canada’s Conflict of Interest Act, public office holders have 60 days after assuming office to file their disclosures and an additional 120 days before finalizing them. This timeline means that if you win the Liberal leadership race on March 9 and opt to call an election shortly thereafter—a scenario which you have speculated is plausible—you could delay revealing your financial interests until well after votes are cast.

You of course claim that you will comply fully with the law. But the law did not anticipate such an unprecedented situation, wherein an individual goes directly from his lucrative private sector roles directly into the Prime Minister’s Office without ever holding any prior elected office. Again, the law as it stands now would allow you to hide your corporate interests and conflicts from Canadians for 120 days after becoming Prime Minister – more than enough time to get through an entire general election.

In another measure that could bump up the company’s value, earlier this year, Stripe declined to pass on savings from a Canadian government-negotiated reduction in interchange fees—the charges merchants pay for credit card transactions—to some of its small business clients. Visa and Mastercard agreed to significantly cut these fees, a move analysts suggested would save Canadian small businesses about $1 billion over five years.

However, Stripe, in its role as a functional middle-man in certain types of payment transactions, elected to keep the savings from some of its customers, prompting loud criticism from small business advocates.

At a House of Commons Industry Committee appearance in late 2024, former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged to take policy action to ensure payment processors like Stripe would pass interchange fee savings along. However, no concrete action has followed, due in part to her ouster from her Ministry, and the Liberal government’s decision to prorogue Parliament and suspend ongoing House of Commons committee hearings on the matter. These moves have left small businesses waiting for relief that may not come soon. It also left many wondering if your undisclosed stake in Stripe—if any—influenced this inaction and whether you stand to gain personally.

Your silence on this issue speaks volumes. You should be calling for Stripe to pass these savings along to Canadian small business, today. This has been a bread and butter issue for many Canadian small businesses, and under the threat of American tariff’s, Canada’s political leaders should be doing everything they can to give these companies a leg up.

But your silence could be explained if you have something to personally gain by staying quiet.

There is nothing stopping you from doing the right thing today. You should call for Stripe to pass the interchange fee savings along to Canadian small businesses and disclose all your corporate interests – not just in Stripe – so all Canadians can see and judge for themselves. Someone seeking to lead our great country should seek to live up to the spirit of Canada’s law. If there is nothing untoward in your assets, you should have no problem doing so today.