The co-founders of data aggregation startup Deck are claiming that a lawsuit from their former employer, National Bank, is “frivolous” and designed to deter investors from backing their venture.
Deck co-founders Lavoie and Leboeuf are asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed and for the plaintiffs to pay $60,000 plus legal fees.
National Bank and its subsidiary Flinks filed a lawsuit in the Québec Superior Court on Dec. 3, accusing Flinks co-founders Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf and Frédérick Lavoie of breaching their non-compete agreement through the activities of their new startup, Deck. The Montréal entrepreneurs filed a defence on Tuesday. The document, which BetaKit has translated from French, refutes the claims and argues that National Bank’s lawsuit is “frivolous, abusive, and destined to fail.”
Neither party’s accusations have yet been tested in court.
The bank is demanding $5.7 million CAD from the defendants, through repayment of any gains they made in alleged violation of the non-compete and through a write-down of Flinks shares they repurchased last year. It’s also calling for Deck to stop commercial activities related to financial data aggregation. Lavoie and Leboeuf are asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed and for the plaintiffs to pay $60,000 plus legal fees.
National Bank, which bought a majority stake in Flinks in 2021, alleged that Leboeuf and Lavoie started building Deck after the sale and misrepresented their commercial intentions.
The co-founders, who left Flinks in June 2024, were barred from engaging in a competing business for five years, according to court documents. Leboeuf and Lavoie asserted that Deck, which launched in the fall of 2024, is not a competitor to Flinks.
“I think it’s clear for everyone and every stakeholder in the market that we do not compete at all with Flinks,” Leboeuf, Deck’s CEO, said in an interview with BetaKit on Thursday.
In a statement to BetaKit on Wednesday, spokesperson Alexandre Guay said National Bank disagrees with the claims made in the defence and would not comment further as the matter is before the courts.
Leboeuf and Lavoie co-founded Flinks, an open banking and data aggregation platform, in 2016. The Flinks product began by connecting consumer banking details with FinTech platforms without screen-scraping, competing with American intermediaries like Plaid. Flinks raised a total of $19 million before its acquisition and has since expanded through enterprise partnerships.
With Deck, Lavoie and Leboeuf say they set out to build a single API to retrieve and aggregate data that is password-protected, such as pulling an invoice for a company’s electricity provider. The startup now offers AI “authentication” agents that can do this autonomously.
RELATED: National Bank sues Flinks co-founders for alleged non-compete violation
“We’re not connecting to banks to pull data,” Leboeuf said. “We are offering AI agents that do ‘read’ and ‘write’ actions on a user’s behalf.”
The defence filing references emails from other FinTech stakeholders, Martin Leclair, a bank and brokerage linking employee at Wealthsimple, and Neo chief commercial officer Jeff Adamson suggesting that they use Deck and Flinks for distinct services.
In an email sent to the Deck co-founders on Jan. 12, Leclair said Wealthsimple was exploring using Deck for a service that Flinks does not offer. Wealthsimple chief legal officer Blair Wiley told BetaKit in a statement on Friday that said the company is not party to this lawsuit and has no position on the matter. “The views and opinions expressed by the employee are solely their own and do not represent the views of the company,” Wiley said.
Neo’s Adamson seemed to affirm Deck and Flinks’ distinct use cases in an email to BetaKit on Friday. He said that Neo uses Flinks to link to third-party bank accounts and authenticate access to funds for its customers, while it’s exploring using Deck to allow customers to more easily switch bill payments and direct deposit over to Neo.
“Both are good but our teams see them as distinctly different,” Adamson wrote. “Additionally, the Deck team has been very clear that they are not intended for FI use cases.”
Leboeuf told BetaKit that he’s been heartened by the Canadian tech community’s reaction to the lawsuit, claiming that he’s received several supportive messages from founders.
In its initial claim, National Bank said that the co-founders didn’t divulge Deck’s goals in a “transparent and honest” manner as was required of their roles at Flinks.
But the defence filing argues that Leboeuf and Lavoie were up front with National Bank and Flinks about their intentions to build Deck throughout its infancy, and shared pitch decks, call minutes with investors, and lists of potential clients. The startup was in development while the co-founders were still at Flinks throughout 2024, and officially launched alongside a seed round announcement in October of that year.
Both claims mention a potential investment from National Bank in Deck’s seed round. According to National Bank’s claim, Leboeuf approached National Bank’s venture arm, NAVentures, asking if they’d be interested in joining Deck’s seed round. Leboeuf told BetaKit that he was told an investment had been approved in May 2024. In its claim, National Bank said its venture arm declined to invest.
Since its founding in 2024, Deck has raised $16.5 million USD ($22.7 million CAD) from investors including Toronto’s Golden Ventures, San Francisco’s Better Tomorrow Ventures, and Montréal’s Luge Capital.
Leboeuf said the lawsuit has been a “distraction” for him and his co-founder. As for resolutions to the legal battle, he said he was “open to anything,” but would continue defending his interests and those of Deck.
Correction (01/23/26): This article originally misstated the name of Deck co-founder Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf. BetaKit regrets the error.
Disclosure: Wealthsimple vice-president of payments strategy and chief compliance officer, Hanna Zaidi, sits on BetaKit’s board of directors.
Feature image courtesy Raysonho under Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0.