FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Canton, GA. - Sept. 10, 2025 | On September 8th, 2025, it was brought to Tradebank's attention that a certain webpage attached to the Tradebank Canada website contained a misleading headline. The webpage, now deleted, stated “BarterPay is now — Tradebank Canada”. The heading was incorrect, and both the creation of the page, and the indexing of the page in Google Search, resulted from an oversight within the Tradebank staff.
What happened
Because the mentioned page was not included in our sitemap, it wasn’t discoverable in any of our menus.
That being said, the page’s contents were indexed by Google, resulting in:
- Google searches with the terms “Tradebank” and “BarterPay” in the same query would display the mentioned page at the top of the search results.
- AI summaries and responses from Gemini, ChatGPT, and other LLM’s with internet search capabilities would incorrectly return that BarterPay was indeed currently a part of Tradebank.
We were notified of a formal complaint that was submitted to IRTA regarding this page, and immediately began to investigate (on September 8th, 2025, at approximately 8:00 AM).
After a thorough investigation, at approximately 1:00 PM on September 9th, 2025, the page was permanently deleted from the Tradebank Canada website. No other instances of misleading “BarterPay” verbiage or other published pieces of text on the Tradebank Canada website were found.
IRTA Clears Tradebank of BarterPay Accusations
On September 12, 2025 at 9:22 AM. the IRTA Ethics Committee determined that there was no malicious intent by Tradebank, and no BarterPay damages were found. You can read IRTA's official declaration below:
"The IRTA Ethics Committee has concluded that...
1. The website language in question was deleted by Tradebank five hours after Tradebank received notice of the existence of the issue.
2. Tradebank had no knowledge of the website language and consequently had no malicious intent to harm BarterPay
3. The assertion that the website language potentially will linger on the internet, despite its deletion, is not valid. Tradebank has offered to assist in making sure the language will be removed 100%, and is currently working on, and will continue working on it to make sure the website language deletion will be permanently erased from the internet.
Based on the above factors, the IRTA Ethics Committee cannot impose first tier Ethics Code disciplinary actions against Tradebank as there was no intent by Tradebank or apparent BarterPay damages. IRTA always strives to resolve disputes before taking public action. As such, the IRTA Ethics Committee considers this matter resolved and highly recommends that both Tradebank and BarterPay establish an open line of communication with each other to avoid this kind of situation from happening again."
Is BarterPay a part of Tradebank Canada?
No, BarterPay is not a part of Tradebank Canada, and has no affiliation with Tradebank as of 2018.
John Porter was a Tradebank franchise owner from 1996 until 2018, where he subsequently parted ways and rebranded into BarterPay.
Contact
For additional information, questions, or concerns, please contact:
Valerie Hale, CEO
Tradebank International
valerie@tradebank.com
678-533-7133
