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Payments Canada announces launch of Canada's Real-Time Rail (RTR) payment system

https://www.payments.ca/canada-launches-real-time-rail-bringing-247-payment-infrastructure-national-economy
563ocd | | 325 | HN
ttul | parent | next
TBH, if you are launching a startup, it might not be a terrible idea to incorporate in Canada. Canada has the notion of federal incorporation in addition to each province having its own corporate registry. Federal corporations can exist in any province but all the filings are done in one place.

The new mega-deduction recently announced [1] results in an effective 6% corporate tax rate, which is among the lowest in the world and certainly in the G-7. Things like the RTR are just one example among many of the efficient infrastructure that Canada is introducing to address a very long term productivity gap (the mega-deduction is another).

And, R&D conducted in Canada is always a current-year expense and never capitalized. And there is a refundable tax credit for R&D that works out to about 60% of engineers' salaries (in most provinces). And those salaries are lower than they are in the US (something that engineers in Canada have a right to complain about).

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2026/09/gov...

cdnsteve | parent | next
No the tax rate isn't 6%, this is incorrect. The 6.4% is the marginal effective tax rate on new investment. Rates are unchanged: 26.5% combined federal/Ontario, or 11.2% for CCPC small-business income. And it's still draft legislation released Sept 15
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cmiles8 | parent | next
“You told me these are the best engineers in the world!”

“I said they were the best engineers in Canada.”

(Quote from the BlackBerry movie)

Attracting strong talent in Canada is hard given the massive pay differences gained by moving south of the border.

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corwinstephen | parent | next
I'm a dual citizen living in Canada and ehhhhhhh idk about this. I incorporated a startup in the states because so much internet infrastructure presumes that's where you'll be and only handles Canada as an afterthought, if at all.

Most recently I tried to use Airwallex (payments provider) for a product that does international payouts and they ONLY let you use their product if you're based in the States.

Canada sometimes has alternatives on offer, but they're usually broken and lacking features.

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wmchen | parent | next
>Canada has the notion of federal incorporation in addition to each province having its own corporate registry. Federal corporations can exist in any province but all the filings are done in one place.

I don't personally think federal incorporation is a huge benefit relative to provincial/state-level incorporation. It mainly provides name protection in every province/federally and makes it marginally easier to expand nationally in Canada. It's main disadvantage is a requirement for Canadian-resident directors which can make it a bit difficult to sell the corporation. The tax laws are the same (though for the most part, if you operate outside of Quebec, you're only dealing with one tax agency), and you still have to file extra-provincially in each province you carry on business, which itself comes with provincial filing requirements (i.e. not a one stop shop).

>The new mega-deduction recently announced [1] results in an effective 6% corporate tax rate, which is among the lowest in the world and certainly in the G-7. Things like the RTR are just one example among many of the efficient infrastructure that Canada is introducing to address a very long term productivity gap (the mega-deduction is another).

This is only for new business investment, though granted since you're discussing startups, it's valid to mention that.

>And, R&D conducted in Canada is always a current-year expense and never capitalized. And there is a refundable tax credit for R&D that works out to about 60% of engineers' salaries (in most provinces). And those salaries are lower than they are in the US (something that engineers in Canada have a right to complain about).

This is true. I do wonder how much of an comparative advantage this is now that engineer salaries are no longer capital deductions in the US. I also recall Canada had a startup visa program to bring co-founders to Canada, but that program is paused and I don't know if it really worked.

More than anything, despite all these advantages, I would imagine access to capital is more important to any startup. You can live in the best regulatory environment in the world, and it would mean nothing if you run out of runway. The investment landscape in Canada is hugely conservative overall, and despite being flagged under successive governments that there's a huge death valley between seed to commercialization, no risk has actually been taken to meaningfully address it. [1]

[1]: https://www.bdc.ca/en/about/analysis-research/canada-venture...

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iamjs | parent | next
If you are a US citizen, the IRS will likely classify your startup as a Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC), so be prepared to navigate the many tax pitfalls like PFIC, GILTI (now called NCTI).
snapplebobapple | parent | next
the downside of canada is the capital market. You need to take things ridiculuosly further to get less money for them vs usa. Plan on twice as long for exposure and possi ly having to go public to get any value. Just hope a us company doesbt steal your idea and do it better over that whole extended exposure period. I dont do any angel investing in canada anymore because of this.
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stackghost | parent | next
Getting funding in Canada is significantly more difficult, though. There are fewer investors at every stage of the startup lifecycle here, and those that do exist are more risk-averse. The cheques they write are smaller, too.
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killingtime74 | parent | next
Many countries have federal incorporation, if anything the state-based one in the US is an exception.

In Australia, the R&D credit can be up to a 100 percent of an engineer's salary.

btbuildem | parent | next
> there is a refundable tax credit for R&D that works out to about 60% of engineers' salaries

I really wish Canada told American companies to fuck all the way off with that. I hate that we support foreign corporate profits with our tax money. It seems like such a scam. I am sure initially it was meant to help innovation and give small businesses an edge, but somehow the googles and the metas can freely take advantage of it too.

apercu | parent | next
My business was in Ontario for its first 7 years, in the US now. I do not miss collecting and reporting HST.

Other than that, Canada is amazing and I miss a lot of aspects.

QGQBGdeZREunxLe | parent | next
Insane that the US does not have a realtime payments network in 2026. FedNow exists but is supported by handful of banks which charge fees to use the feature.

> Outgoing transfers cost 0.75% of the transaction amount (minimum of $1, maximum of $30). SoFi does not charge a fee for incoming transactions.

> SoFi Plus members save 50%. They pay 0.375% of the transaction amount with a maximum of $15 (minimum remains $1).

https://www.sofi.com/banking/instant-money-transfer

JumpCrisscross | parent | next
> Insane that the US does not have a realtime payments network

The U.S. invented real-time gross settlement electronic payments with Fedwire in 1915 [1]. FedNow is the newest real-time end-to-end payment system [2]. It launched in 2023.

[1] https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/fedwire

[2] https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow-servic...

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whh | parent | next
Pretty wild. Australia's had NPP since 2018. You can send money to somebody's phone number and it's in their bank account instantly.

https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/new-payme...

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smath | parent | next
Can anyone knowledgeable explain (or point to a good reference) why the US doesn't have a real time payment system, say something like UPI in India?
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adamdecaf | parent | next
There’s the RTP network in the US as well, but both networks are growing and reach over ~70% of deposit accounts.

Pricing for customers varies by network participant. The network prices are cheap.

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sam1714 | parent | next
For purchases, the US has debit cards and Zelle. Banks instantly exchange non-revocable promises to pay and the money follows at the end of the day. This is more capital (cash) efficient because it allows netting. One key here is that everybody in the US banking system is under the same regulators (Federal Reserve, FDIC/NCUA) so there's greater trust that they won't go under before the cash comes.

A very important point is that debit cards offer consumer protections (chargebacks for unsatisfactory goods). FedNow, Zelle, wires, ACH do not and people have lost money by scams this way.

If you don't need it right that second, same-day ACH is widely used, and again the delay allows more efficient netting.

The Clearing House's CHIPS is a good in-between, it's not guaranteed instant, but uses an algorithm to match transactions as fast as possible with constrained float.

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skybrian | parent | next
I wonder if Regulation E has anything to do with slow adoption of new tech that's a fraud risk?
yieldcrv | parent | next
Real Time Payments exists in the US as The Clearing House (TCH) RTP® Network

US bank has it, Mercury does as well

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mlekoszek | parent | next
As a Canadian, I like this. It really sounds like they're taking Interac's proprietary e-Transfer system and rolling it out as a public good for any bank to build on. That's pretty cool. It also seems smart to have involved Interac as partner, instead of trying to build around them.

Like all things from any government -- let's see how the rollout goes. But I am cautiously happy to hear about this.

johnwalkr | parent | next
I like this too. It’s worth noting that interact debit has been around in Canada forever (got my first card in the 90s), etransfer (using just an email address) for a long time and in general Canadian banks have been great at working with each other and abroad. And there was never a ton of private apps you had to rely on.

Both places are better now but I remember being in the US in the 2010s and having an easier time using my bank card to get cash than an American far away from their credit union. In Japan in 2012 I also sometimes used my Canadian bank card when my Japanese bank was closed for a holiday (this was fixed in 2015).

lbourdages | parent | next
E-transfer is not a real time payment system. The recipient's financial institution lends the money to them and then the actual funds (which were frozen by your bank to ensure money is available) gets transferred asynchronously over a period of a few days, as with any legacy bank transfer. It's just hidden away from the end-users.
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gverrilla | parent | next
> Like all things from any government

Like all things... human???

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xattt | parent
How comfortable are you going to be requesting a payment from someone by asking them to rail you?

/s

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mig39 | parent | next
Doesn't look like any of Canada's major banks are taking part?

> The initial cohort of active RTR system participants includes: Wealthsimple, Questbank, Peoples Trust Company, Paramount Commerce, KOHO, DoBusiness.com™, Digital Commerce Bank, Bank of America,

throw0101c | parent | next
> However, many of Canada’s major banks are expected to join in as well. Royal Bank of Canada, for example, is expected to introduce RTR in the second quarter of 2027.

* https://globalnews.ca/news/12142666/real-time-rail-payments-...

jjmarr | parent | next
Wealthsimple has 170 billion in assets under administration, while BMO, the smallest major bank, only has 310 billion. Considering WS is 100% retail, it's arguably a major financial institution at this point (though legally not a bank).
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a-priori | parent | next
They'll be in later phases, once they feel confident enough to significantly ramp up volume:

> Participants will be added to the RTR in three phases to help control the volume of transactions added to the system, with the goal of including every Canadian financial institution on the rail by mid-2027.

> The major banks – which will shift massive amounts of volume onto the RTR – are not involved in the first phase of the rollout, but will join in the second and third phases.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-payments-ca...

_verandaguy | parent | next
I would expect the integration into the Interac network (itself a sort of consortium of the big banks that provides a number of debit-adjacent services) will mean that adoption by the big players will be pretty quick.
rsynnott | parent | next
Ah, this is the SEPA Instant problem. SEPA Instant was introduced a decade ago, and remained largely useless until bank support was made mandatory last year.
_spduchamp | parent | next
It is harder for major banks to update their systems for this, so it will take them a while to implement. Smaller more nimble institutions will jump on first.
TMWNN | parent
Context: The Big Five Canadian banks have 90% of the market, compared to the Big Four US banks's 50% of the market.
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petcat | parent | next
Will be curious to see if this ends up requiring Google/Apple accounts and mobile device attestation in order to work.
muizelaar | parent | next
Real-time Rail is for financial institutions to settle transactions not for direct consumer use.
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disiplus | parent
if its like SEPA in europe then you dont need google or apple, its seperate network that you get access through your regular or digital bank
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MarkusWandel | parent | next
So basically a modernized M-PESA? Where you just scan a QR code or such, and then say how much $$ you want to transfer to that account, with cash-like low effort?

The last bastion of cash, for me, here is garage sales. Absolutely everything else has gone cashless, but low-friction, low dollar transfers between individuals is still ruled by cash. Not that I haven't paid for stuff via Interac e-transfer but that has high friction (log into bank app, add one-time payee etc.) so only for cases where suitable cash isn't on hand.

freeone3000 | parent
The consumer infrastructure isn’t part of this agreement, so don’t expect it to be better than interac on that front. (Interac etransfer can also do the above with QR codes, but most people don’t bother. I’ve only seen street musicians set it up.) The primary benefit here is reducing interac settlement time from 30 minutes to less than 2.
lifeisstillgood | parent | next
So the quiet voice here is I think the desire to stop small businesses being the working capital providers of larger ones (“take the 90 day payment terms or go find someone else”)
EngCanMan | parent
The larger business’s still won’t pay the smaller ones any faster. Payment processing wasn’t 90 days.
lbrito | parent | next
I couldn't find this info in the release, but I assume account information and transactions go through the Bank of Canada? That's how the closest analogy, Brazil's Pix, works.
id34 | parent
RTR is owned and run by Payments Canada, which is a crown corp that also runs Lynx (large value transfer system) and ACSS (cheque clearing system.) PayCan itself is overseen by the Minister of Finance, but there is Bank of Canada oversight (risk and prudential) of the key designated systems RTR, Lynx, ACSS under the Payment Clearing and Settlements Act (PCSA)
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arkt8 | parent | next
Interesting it have "lower processing costs". It could be free at all like Brazilian PIX... but certainly it wouldn't be liked by Visa and Mastercard.

People in Brazil can simply generate a one time PIX code or use own key and instantly receive. It is now the most used payment mode for more than a hundred million people... this is why Trump attacked the Brazilian financial system as unfair with North American payment systems.

Yes, it can have no cost, receiver can have no cost, payer need not to have a hidden cost at price tag and it can save billions of dollars and make products and services circulate more, warming economy , reducing unemployment and avoiding money dump to external countries for the local enterpreneurs.

dghlsakjg | parent | next
Canada already has Interac e-transfer for p2p which is largely free (banks are allowed to charge, but in practice they don't charge consumers).

E-transfer was launched 17 years before Pix so it runs on email addresses as an identifier. In my experience most people use e-transfer more often than cash for person to person and many small businesses like farm stands, etc.

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manas96 | parent | next
Is this similar to India's UPI? How will the end user interact with this system?
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bawolff | parent | next
I guess i dont really understand what this means for the average consumer. Isn't interac etransfer essentially instant?
pcthrowaway | parent | next
It's not instant and it relies on a private company for settlement. Even though customers typically get this for "free", the institutions themselves are paying interac for these (so the account-holders are paying for this one way or another)

From what I can tell, e-transfers will continue using interac's network, so I'm not sure if this will benefit users at all. Depends if banks integrate a new user-facing money transfer option. I suspect it'll take years if not decades for banking institutions to roll this out to users, though they may use this behind the scenes for inter-institutional transfers without Interac.

Someone who's more knowledgeable about Canadian banking and payment processing, feel free to jump in here because I'd like to know more as well.

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inhumantsar | parent | next
Interactive etransfers are far from instant. My last company supported etransfer payments. On a good day they would take ~10s to process, 30s was decent, and single digit minutes were normal. Legitimate payments that got flagged by Interac's fraud detection rules were often subject to delays measured in hours, sometimes days.

Good enough for consumer to consumer use and some online use cases, but definitely not good enough for retail.

hbn | parent
When I sell things on local used sites I started only accepting cash because e-transfer is so slow and led to situations of someone standing in my entryway while we wait to confirm the money went through.

Or giving up and saying "alright, I guess I'll trust you and hope the money comes soon"

cavisne | parent | next
Australia launched some sort of realtime payments system a few years ago and it… changed nothing?

Credit cards just have incredible lockin.

ram1500natrluvr | parent
Didn't interchange fees in Australia get capped this year? I wonder if that'll push people away from credit cards over time.
hbn | parent | next
Maybe a dumb question, I skimmed the post but it's a lot to take in. Would this potentially enable third party integrations, like Venmo or sending money through iMessage? That's something I've always been a bit jealous of with Americans. E-transfer has been fine but it's clunky.
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Marsymars | parent
Isn't "etransfer clunky compared to venmo" just a function of how your particular bank has designed their app UI/UX?
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tamimio | parent | next
The article didn’t mention how is this different from current interac, and great to see wealthsimple is already in it!
toomuchtodo | parent
Canada's Interac is anagolous to US' Zelle payment network (which is owned by the largest US commercial banks), while RTR is the US FedNow equivalent ("true" instant payment and settlement with broader use case support, operated as a utility by the US Federal Reserve).

https://www.redcompasslabs.com/insights/why-canada-needs-ano... was something I found via a search that explains some of the nuance without writing a new post on the topic, other citations and resources are welcome.

(it should be expected that newer, utility ran instant payment systems cannibalize existing, more expensive, lower speed payment rails; going fast and being cheap as a utility is the innovation)

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frereubu | parent | next
Totally OT, but such a glorious name of the guy in the middle of the top photo, "François-Philippe Champagne". If I read that in a novel I'd be rolling my eyes.
heffer | parent | next
In Canada he's also affectionately known as Frankie Bubbles.
id34 | parent
Making Mr. Champagne the minister of Finance is a great nomative determinism, only slightly dulled by the fact he's been minister of like 5 other things over his career
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yanhangyhy | parent | next
basic something like alipay or wechat pay? like china did at least for 10 years? at a country scale?

anyway they are super useful, to personal users and for stores/small shops/....when traving abord, i have to carry a visa/mastercard,and worried i might lose my card somewhere, or got stoled. i know apple pay is pretty good, but i am not a fan of apple product and i guess it's not only me ( or the price issue), a universal online payment systems, run as an app, and qr code is the right way for basilly every country.

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NavinF | parent
Canada's RTR has no chargebacks so it's not comparable to visa/mastercard where you can yank the money back up to 6 months later if the seller doesn't send you what they promised. Pretty much every modern phone can do tap to pay, you don't need an iPhone
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Scaled | parent | next
I really hope US equivalents gain more traction. For too long, we've borne inflated transaction prices and financial censorship.
ChrisArchitect | parent | next
Not so hot on the name, initially thought it was some kind of train system payment thing. But that just lends to the coverage of this out in random mainstream media confusing consumers - not really a consumer thing but an infrastructure thing on the backend for banks/institutions. On the consumer side many will immediately think of Interac eTransfers, which this has little to do with as far as consumer experience, but it will also use this on the backend for things. Carry on.
embedding-shape | parent
Yeah, why on earth would they shove "Rail" into that name? I'm sure it makes sense internally, but as external name it doesn't make much sense. None of the people are even using the rail/train analogies that are right there, then what's the point even?!

> "Payment rail" is a very long established term og art.

Yes, by all means, use the existing terms internally, but when you launch things, remember you work in somewhat of a bubble, and figure out names that make sense to people. 99% of the people aren't gonna know about "payment rails", and when they hear "rails", they either think about trains, or they're a programmer and starts thinking about Ruby. And then of course there is a third group of people, like the ones that say "Payment rail is actually an established term".

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ahmetozer | parent | next
is it similar to Turkiye's Fast ?
cush | parent | next
So no more visa fees?
100111011111 | parent | next
Wait whats new then, dont they have interac, its at least real time on the surface and you can bind cards, bank accounts etc to it, so what am I missing?
thomasjeff1 | parent
I believe it's a show-off of "progress" on the fintech side. Not saying it's bad and for sure some good will come out of it. But a lot of government projects are just how money is created in Canada and to keep the economy moving. It makes Canada look important and enhances the "Canada" brand. This can be dangerous as it can give you a feeling of accomplishing something without really innovating anything.
julianlam | parent | next
Interac (eTransfer/EMT) is a great system that has already rolled out nation-wide.

Unfortunately its utility is curtailed severely if your bank doesn't trust your mobile OS (LineageOS, for me). For security purposes, my bank (RBC) triggers identity checks every time I try to send an EMT, and even after sending selfies, drivers licences, etc. — it still rejects the transfer.

So, security at the cost of all utility.

I have now resorted to transferring money between my accounts using paper cheques... like it's the 90s. If somehow they deny me cheque deposits I'll have to use an ATM and walk the money to the other bank. Given how there are now banks that don't even have branches, this could be a major problem in the future.

This Real-Time Rail system sounds promising, but that's not the link that'll kill it for everyone.

T-RN-R | parent | next
99.999% of people don’t root and install custom operating systems on consumer hardware. The bank derives immense security value by enforcing this, at the expense of your hobby installation.
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dcrazy | parent | next
The utility is preventing malware bundled with pirated apps from transferring away your personal savings in a hard-to-reverse instant transfer.

You, as a technically savvy user, could choose to use a dedicated device with an acceptable security posture for your electronic transfers.

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gpm | parent | next
Weird... I've never had problems using eTransfer from a browser (firefox) on my computer (linux)... which has got to be as untrustworthy a device as there is.
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kevin_nisbet | parent | next
Unless I'm missing something I'd expect Payments Canada to have similar issues for you, since it'll still be the banks that you interact with. What changes is the settlement and messaging system between the banks.
fl4regun | parent | next
can't you just use the web interface?
tamimio | parent | next
Interesting, did you try other apps if they work on grapheneos/lineageos like koho or wealthsimple? If they do, maybe you can use it as an intermediate tool.
metalman | parent
Bieng in a similar situation, my back up plan has been to keep a phone that is used exclusivly for personal banking and pull the sim and shut it off when not in use. Currently I have a much fiddled with android phone and a browser that will interact with the banks web sites for banking. I get a lot of paper cheques and convert to cash for much of my personal spending, and my hope is that the new system will facilitate timely clearance of paper cheques and actualy make them more atractive.
maratc | parent | next
High on self-approval but low on details. Are the transactions reversible? For instance, can a scammer convince an elderly person to transfer money to their account (instantaneously) and then split it and send the money to partners in crime (also instantaneously)? What is the process for conflict resolution, for cases like the product fully paid for (instantaneously) doesn’t work as advertised? How much information on payer identity is being shared with a recipient, to be recorded, cross-matched and sold to the highest bidder?

Sometimes I think that the slow speed of moving money is a feature, not a bug.

filearts | parent | next
> delivery partners CGI, Deloitte Canada, IBM Canada

oh no

| parent | next
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mentalgear | parent | next
Just like the EU started their independent EU-wide (500 million people) payment network to become independent of the American payment monopolists. It took a fascist US admin to get the move world-wide rolling to decouple from the US and towards smaller sovereignty, but ultimately it is for the better.
dmix | parent | next
This project started in 2016. It just took a decade to roll out.
KellyCriterion | root | parent
If you are referring to SEPA Instant, thats not true: It started operating in 2017, though not many participants back then. What happened last year/this year, is, thats its mandatory for banks to offer it across the EU.
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sandworm101 | parent
Far more likely was the election of a banker as PM. He did chair both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. No doubt he knows how to get banks to do things.
xunil2ycom | parent | next
I kept looking for something referencing the railways. Was disappointed.
| parent | next
{"deleted":true,"id":50428683,"parent":50427362,"time":1794245557,"type":"comment"}
giannischatz | parent | next
EU has been down this road with SEPA Instant Credit Transfer since 2017. Two lessons from that rollout worth watching for Canada:

1. Reachability matters more than speed — SEPA Inst was technically live years before most PSPs actually supported it. A real-time rail no-one connects to is just a slower rail with marketing.

2. ISO 20022 as the message format was the right call but underestimated operationally. Smaller banks and PSPs still struggle with the schema's flexibility — same transaction encoded two different "valid" ways is a real integration tax. Canada using 20022 from day one is smart; publishing strict usage guidelines beats expecting consensus.

purpleidea | parent | next
Does it require an email? Because if it does you already failed. If you don't increase privacy protections as well, then we don't care.
rvz | parent | next
So FedNow for Canada, meaning you can't use this outside of Canada at all.

Crypto blockchains like Solana, XRP, Stellar and Tempo on the other hand can be used anywhere worldwide, 24/7 and sends stablecoins like USDC in seconds with extremely low fees.

petcat | parent | next
Crypto blockchains are useless for these kinds of transactions because in the real world people make mistakes, get scammed, or myriad other things that requires a transaction to be reversed.
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greyw | parent
As understand it, these mechanisms do not help in the case of fraud or disputes. No way to reverse transactions.
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shevy-java | parent | next
The bigger take-away is that relying on US companies here, is very risky. Canada understands this. Europe does not (at the least most politicians in Europe do not understand the problem). I'd almost suggest canadian politicians to help run the EU for a while, just to fix numerous issues that arise due to a lack of understanding. Canadians really understand the problem domain soooooo much better than Europans. This also includes a nuclear arsenal - both the EU and Canada need their own arsenal (details need to be mapped out, of course, but just blindly relying on the USA is a losing option; you can see it now with Ukraine, where the USA blackmails Ukraine to give up territory. Agent Krasnov is doing his dirty deed and will get billions from the mini Darth Vader in Russia. Yuri explained this in 1984: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk and he was spot on. A shame he is not among us anymore, unlike Putin).
coevcan | parent | next
I don't know why anyone would trust the Liberal government with a payment system, after they went rogue and froze about 200 bank accounts without court orders during the convey protests using the emergencies act which has since been deemed illegal.

> Using powers granted under the Emergencies Act, the federal government has directed banks and other financial institutions to stop doing business with people associated with the anti-vaccine mandate convoy occupying the nation's capital.

> ... financial institutions are required to monitor and halt all transactions that funnel money to demonstrators — a measure designed to cut off funding to a well-financed protest ...

If you think they wouldnt abuse this, good luck to you.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottaw...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-fin...

https://reclaimthenet.org/court-rules-trudeau-freezing-civil...

seryoiupfurds | parent | next
With or without this new payment system, they can order the banks to freeze your account or block transactions (as your example shows they were able to do before this payment system was rolled out).
ravetcofx | parent | next
While it may have been since deemed illegal, they found a few of those trucks to be armed to brim with munitions. It was strong reaction to try and prevent a violent insurrection on Parliament Hill, which was still fresh on many Canadians minds from Jan 6.
mmooss | parent | next
> why anyone would trust the Liberal government ... after they ... froze about 200 bank accounts ... during the convey protests

Wasn't that almost 5 years ago - was it the same government? Is there reason to believe it's the Liberals and not the prime minister at the time, or that the Conservatives would be different?

mnkv | parent
You're conveniently leaving out that the PEO report found they were justified in using the emergency powers act since it was a complete failure of the local and provincial police to act, so they had to do something.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poec-report-released-friday...

So hey, maybe we should trust the government (who does all federal payment systems) with a new federal payment system.

diego_moita | parent | next
TL;DR: this is not Brazilian Pix or Indian UPI.

Meh, just another "payment option".

These payment systems need network effects, otherwise they just won't matter. Another private provider won't generate these effects. Just look at the list of participants, they're small players in Canada's marketplace. They won't generate net effects.

Besides, in times of renewed imperialism it is very crucial that a country has full control of their payment systems.

And, at last, they must offer guarantees that there will be no friction and won't be subject to enshitification.

So, what Canada needs is a system implemented, enforced and managed by the government, like Brazil's Pix and India's UPI.

dghlsakjg | parent | next
> So, what Canada needs is a system implemented, enforced and managed by the government, like Brazil's Pix and India's UPI.

Payments Canada is a corporation fully owned by the government and overseen by the Department of Finance. It was formed by an Act of Parliament. Short of rolling it into the department of finance it couldn't be more of a government effort.

Also, the small partners are the launch partners. The Big 6 are part of the second phase of rollout in 2027. The projection is that 90% of all canadian bank accounts will be covered in the next year.

lbrito | parent | next
Why not? Payments Canada isn't a "private provider" like Interac. This new payments system is also ISO 20022, as is Pix. Although high level, their list of features seems close to Pix:

* The real-time clearing and settlement component

* The real-time exchange component

* Third party exchanges flowing through the clearing and settlement component

* Centralized fraud solution

https://www.payments.ca/systems-services/payment-systems/rea...

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post-it | parent
Payments Canada is a Crown corporation.
bryanlarsen | parent | next
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everfree | parent
Included soon, from the article:

> With additional participants onboarding continually in the coming months, including all major Canadian financial institutions and other members applying for access, the RTR will be available to more than nine in 10 Canadians within the first year after launch.