The registrant served retail travel agencies by booking and purchasing airline tickets for the agencies' customers, which resulted in the receipt by it of commissions from the airlines. Where the retail agencies had no agreement with the issuer of the customer's credit card, the registrant would act as the "merchant" insofar as the credit card issuer was concerned, so that the voucher amount for the ticket was advanced to it, with that amount being used by the registrant towards the cost of the ticket. In those situations, the registrant charged $15 per ticket to the retail agency to cover the charge of 2% to 3% by which the credit card issuer discounted the amounts which it paid to the registrant.
Before finding that this $15 charge was consideration for a financial service, Archambault J rejected (at para. 22) a submission of the registrant that it claimed payment from the credit card issuers as mandatary of the retail agencies:
It was not established that Skylink had agreed with the retail agencies that it would act as their mandatary by requesting payment from the issuers. Nor is there any evidence that Skylink informed the issuers that it was acting as the retail agencies' mandatary.