Missing $10-million in restaurant tips exposes gaps in rules for payment platforms

By Alexandra Posadzki

An alert popped up when restaurateur Eric Griffith opened his digital wallet on Everyday Payments, the platform he used to distribute gratuities to his staff, late last month.

It informed him of a withdrawal from his bank account: three times the amount he had authorized the payment provider to take, Mr. Griffith alleges. Between Alta Bistro and Alpha Cafe, his two businesses in Whistler, B.C., Mr. Griffith was out roughly $14,000 – just as rent was coming due.

“I was like, what? I didn’t ask for that. … I don’t want that much money in that account,” he said.

Then he noticed something even more troubling. Transaction history indicated that before the triple withdrawal, the tip-pooling service, which is jointly owned by Toronto-based XTM Inc. and Edmonton-based Everyday People Financial Corp., had allegedly taken all of the cash – about $4,500 – that had been sitting in Mr. Griffith’s digital wallets.

A similar situation was playing out at restaurants and other hospitality businesses across the country, according to industry associations.

Published by the Globe and Mail.