In 2025, American-owned Visa and Mastercard controlled 96 percent of Canada’s credit card market

many consumers pay with Apple-issued iPhones or use terminals run by American companies, such as Chase, Global Payments, Square, and Stripe.

A system that inconveniences a judge today could, in theory, be turned against a whole country tomorrow. The United Kingdom is reportedly exploring a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard over fears Trump could use United States–owned payment providers to freeze its economy. European officials have warned the continent is dangerously exposed to such coercion.

Canada had a taste of that vulnerability during the 2022 Rogers outage, which affected over 12 million subscribers (including Interac). It was estimated the economic cost to the broader Canadian economy was $142 million. Cloudflare’s global outage in 2025 only lasted about six hours but was estimated to cost Shopify over $4 million (US).