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ttul 3 hours ago [-]
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).
“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.
hello_moto 2 minutes ago [-]
US hi-tech companies opened branches in Canadian cities. Used to be for H1B hopper but no longer the case: they have been expanding their footprints.
cdnsteve 3 hours ago [-]
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
wmchen 2 hours ago [-]
>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]
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).
btbuildem 17 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
stackghost 2 hours ago [-]
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.
notduckrabbit 2 hours ago [-]
The trend has been for Canadian startups to find funding outside of Canada. With Cohere the government appears be trying to alter this.
stackghost 2 hours ago [-]
>The trend has been for Canadian startups to find funding outside of Canada.
Yes, this is exactly what I was describing. The deals here tend to suck and are few. Cohere is the exception that proves the rule, if you ask me.
deskamess 10 minutes ago [-]
And a govt program to boot. I doubt they get it from non-govt Canadian firms like banks. They usually don't understand startup culture and seem to want close-to-profitability before investment. Risk averse business culture.
triceratops 2 hours ago [-]
Does it have to be Canadian investors though? Why don't Sequoia et al invest in Canadian (or Japanese or German) companies directly? I'm aware that many VC firms have a foreign presence and I'm not talking about that.
It's always struck me as a little weird that a company has to be within driving distance of Sand Hill road to get attention from a Silicon Valley VC. VCs can't hop on a flight to do some due diligence? Video conferencing isn't good enough for monthly status meetings?
CharlieDigital 1 hours ago [-]
> VCs can't hop on a flight to do some due diligence?
I think it's more of an issue of familiarity with the regulatory environment. VCs and PE know how to operate in specific legal and regulatory landscapes. With standard paper.
Asking them to operate in new jurisdictions requires a lot of effort and legal know-how; it's not just a matter of cutting a check, but understanding how to navigate the legal landscape for these financial transactions, rights of the investor, tax implications, legal recourse, etc. There's going to be a lot of friction such that they'll either: 1) not seek those opportunities, 2) ask the founders to move to the US if it's a really promising team (see this a lot; was in one startup where a co-founder moved from AUS to the US).
Melanie Perkins talks a bit about this in the Canva episode of How I Built This[0] and how SV wanted them to relocate. AUS government ended up matching some of the investment through a new program so they reached their target for their raise.
> Why don't Sequoia et al invest in Canadian (or Japanese or German) companies directly?
Economies of scale. Many investors can review and fund a standard Delaware C corporation without even passing it to outside counsel.
For Canada, not only will you probably special counsel, you may also have additional up front and ongoing accounting costs related to tax treatment, et cetera. You also know that this is potentially a hurdle that start-up will face in every sale and supply-chain contract it signs, unless it relents and just chooses a normal jurisdiction, at which point why don't they just create a Delaware entity and headquarter in Canada?
triceratops 55 minutes ago [-]
I take your point, really, and I understand there's more friction. But do the people who authorize the checks also do the beancounting personally?
Accounting and legal stuff is going to be farmed out to licensed professionals regardless of where the company is. And you can't tell me there's a shortage of US + Canada tax or legal specialists.
JumpCrisscross 31 minutes ago [-]
> do the people who authorize the checks also do the beancounting personally?
There are a lot of small-shop and even one-man private investors. Increasingly as wealth accumulates and AI automates.
> you can't tell me there's a shortage of US + Canada tax or legal specialists
They're usually a different partner at a big, expensive firm. Or, if you use a small firm, it means establishing a brand new engagement.
I make personal investments. That would be a dealbreaker for me. If I really liked the company I might try to talk a cross-border friend into running a fund that makes the investment so I don't have to deal with the B.S.
bdamm 2 hours ago [-]
It's not crazy. A VC isn't one person. A VC is a team and a community. Plus you don't really know how that money is tied up and what forces are at play securing it; some of those forces will be immovable or not viable in other countries.
triceratops 2 hours ago [-]
Sure maybe Japanese law and culture are a bit more opaque to your average valley VC. Canada though?
bdamm 2 hours ago [-]
My primary point is that if a particular investor wants to have dinner with a prospect and bring 4 or 5 of his colleagues, he can't easily do that anywhere else. The secondary point may be small or may be massive, nobody can really know since nobody outside of those directly influenced by shadow money could know.
triceratops 2 hours ago [-]
The prospect can fly out to meet the VC and have dinner.
stackghost 2 hours ago [-]
This is what does happen, except "fly out to meet the VC and have dinner" usually means "fly to the Bay Area", rather than "fly to Vancouver or Waterloo", at which point many Canadian founders who want VC funding realize their time is more efficiently spent if they just launch in the US rather than commuting there.
filoleg 1 hours ago [-]
> It's always struck me as a little weird that a company has to be within driving distance of Sand Hill road to get attention from a Silicon Valley VC
Is it actually true as of 2026? Asking because it sounds like a pure cope.
I was under the impression that Silicon Valley VCs have no issues with funding tech companies based in major US tech hubs outside of SV(especially ones like NYC).
Canada/Japan/Germany/etc. is a whole separate story though, and I am not contesting that (given there are plenty of very obvious reasons for why a SV-based VC firm wouldn't want to invest in a company based in one of those places).
triceratops 59 minutes ago [-]
What are the obvious reasons?
stackghost 2 hours ago [-]
In my experience VCs suffer from immensely-inflated senses of self-importance, and think that they possess some unique skill/knowledge to "pick the winners", and so they expect you to come kowtow to them rather than deign to come meet you where you're at. Whether or not that's why there's less VC presence/deal flow in Canada I'm not sure.
triceratops 2 hours ago [-]
Afaik even "come kowtow to them" to get funding isn't enough. A lot of Valley VCs want early stage startups to relocate.
apercu 1 hours ago [-]
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.
newsclues 2 hours ago [-]
Regulatory hell!
QGQBGdeZREunxLe 5 hours ago [-]
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).
> 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.
For nearly 20 years the UK has had "faster payments", free instant transfers, now up to £1m, and while you can't send to a phone number, the routing numbers needed can't be used to withdraw so are generally safe to give to people.
fpoling 3 hours ago [-]
UK system is rather inconvenient and most web sites do not have even an option to use that. And forget using that to pay in a shop. Compare that to Bizum in Spain or Vipps in Norway where one can very conveniently pay using that both online and in shops and the systems naively supports refunds and payment reservations and subscriptions similar to debit cards.
eterm 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, it's less about payments than more modern systems. The UK has free current ( checking) accounts with debit cards that are essentially free to use, so there's not much incentive for other payment systems. A contactless debit card is quicker and easier to use than an app anyway, although google/apple apps work with that too.
Subscriptions are often done via "direct debit" ( since 1970 ), which is safer than letting anyone take money if they have your details, so that's been a solved problem here for a while too.
The downside is the first-movers problem, where the UK having been ahead a couple of decades ago will now likely be behind for a while, because there isn't so much incentive.
Hopefully not as long as the USA has been behind though!
benashford 3 hours ago [-]
I get the benefit for the merchant to use an instant payment system. On the other hand, I don't understand the benefit is for the consumer. An increasing number of UK merchants use Pay By Bank (which is essentially an easy way to make a payment by pre-filling the merchant's bank details in your banking app), but if you choose to use it you're instantly losing the consumer protections that come from using a debit or (especially) a credit card: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/pay-by-bank-warnin...
The only way I would use such a system for purchases would be if the merchant refused debit/credit cards, and even then only if there wasn't an alternative merchant I could use.
cavisne 3 hours ago [-]
Has it actually helped anything? B2C is still all credit card or (due to some weird regulation) cash because of the credit card fees being passed on.
lazyasciiart 3 hours ago [-]
Even before that Australia had bank transfers, the US had Paypal and now Zelle.
smath 4 hours ago [-]
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?
smallmancontrov 4 hours ago [-]
Mostly the curse of the first mover, with a dash of corruption for spice.
Part of it is "the curse of good enough": the US has had good credit-card style infrastructure for over a century and digital infrastructure since the POTS days. Part of it is that we lost our appetite for anti-trust in the 80s. Part of it is that the price structure of this infrastructure has wormed its way into everything in a way that is difficult to undo without causing high-visibility inconvenience for low-visibility benefit. The good-enough is the enemy of the good.
devilbunny 1 minutes ago [-]
The US also has incredibly pro-consumer regulation over credit cards, compared to most of the world. There is no such thing as "not protecting your card" as a way for the bank to get out of paying for credit card fraud. Legally, you are liable for the first $50 of unauthorized charges, and that's it (though most cards will cover all of it).
skrause 3 hours ago [-]
I think it's mainly because they aren't forced by regulation.
Germany is another first mover with decades old banking systems and standards. German banks also dragged their feet supporting SEPA Instant or they added additional fees so that barely anybody wanted to use it.
Then the EU stepped in with regulation: If you support classic SEPA transactions, you also have to support SEPA Instant for the same price (which is almost always free for retail banking accounts). And suddenly banks did.
smallmancontrov 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, this could be fixed with regulation -- but whoever did the regulation would have to contend with angry fools complaining about how "the government took away my credit card rewards!!!" for years and of course the credit card companies themselves would stir and amplify those voices as much as possible.
fn-mote 3 hours ago [-]
> the price structure of this infrastructure has wormed its way into everything in a way that is difficult to undo without causing high-visibility inconvenience for low-visibility benefit
I think the “recent” change allowing merchants to pass along the credit card fees is a step in the right direction.
I think a lot of people would still choose fraud protection for the extra costs, though.
alphazard 4 hours ago [-]
Payment processors and banks lobby for control over this.
As usual, a service/product is bad because no one is allowed to create a better alternative, this is an almost universal rule.
Specific to this case: the government is included in the list of parties not allowed to make it better.
brunoborges 3 hours ago [-]
> the government is included in the list of parties not allowed to make it better.
The government is the only one capable of changing the rules to be included in the list of allowed parties to make it better.
shimman 2 hours ago [-]
Do you mean in Canada or is this also the case in the US?
Aspos 4 hours ago [-]
Mostly deficiencies of the political system: regulators see themselves, call themselves and act like "watchdogs", whereas in other countries financial regulators act like shepherds and lead the market. Hence in this country relatively minor players with interests not exactly aligned with the general public can hijack the process. That's what we are witnessing.
kolanos 4 hours ago [-]
Not real time, but ACH is being forcibly sped up by regulators. [0]
> All U.S. financial institutions (Receiving Depository Financial Institutions or RDFIs) must participate and accept Same Day ACH credit transactions.
> However, sending (originating) Same Day ACH payments is optional for banks and credit unions.
That's great, but $1 per transaction makes same day ACH tough for small transactions
bernardom 3 hours ago [-]
$1 is not market.
I've signed up for or seen the contracts for several payment processors across several companies. Rack rate for ACH debit starts at $0.25/trx and goes down to sub-penny at scale. Returns can be high though ($2 per, going down as well).
Edited to add: that's not a defense, I *loathe* ACH. It's a negative-reporting system which is such a pain to deal with.
e63f67dd-065b 4 hours ago [-]
My understanding is that sameday ACH does not cost extra (from a network perspective) than regular ACH, it's just that some shitty banks apparently like to charge extra for it.
mwwaters 2 hours ago [-]
Outside the AI summaries, I couldn’t easily find the sources. But a couple of different sources say same-day ACH is 5.2 cents per outgoing item while overnight is 0.35 cents.
What I can say is the Fed has draconian rules for pricing its services. The services cannot be subsidized but must be priced to recover costs, including a return on capital similar to what a private payment system (ie from the Clearinghouse) would expect.
4 hours ago [-]
iAMkenough 4 hours ago [-]
I think it’s the general desire for a “smaller” Federal government that instead relies on private sector solutions.
For other examples, look at adoption of login.gov vs id.me, and tax filing software solutions.
Because why would Musk possibly be interested in saving money and making the government run more efficiently?
What an egotistical ass hat.
j16sdiz 4 hours ago [-]
In most part of the world, the government just force the bank to join the payment system and restrict how they charge the customer.
In the USA, no single regulator have that power. Basically only congress can do something like this.
The us Congress ain't famous for being fast, you know.
upboundspiral 4 hours ago [-]
The Fed prints a fraction of a fraction of the actual money in circulation. Private banks in practice control the money supply. As such, they want to maintain their monopoly.
The countries that have innovated the most in regards to automated payments are the ones trying to escape US influence: look at PIX in Brazil, BRICS pay, etc...
In America, the payment system is an oligarchy, they protect their own (the bankers), what need is there for innovation when they are making a killing out of the current inefficiency?
The one place where the US haven't been slow is in stablecoins, making them dollar donominated, to ensure the monopoly the US dollar has on international trade stays strong. That way, when the US has a crisis, they take down the rest of the world too, to the joy of non-US countries.
3 hours ago [-]
yieldcrv 4 hours ago [-]
It does. Outdated information RTP is what its called
jameson 4 hours ago [-]
Lobbying?
richwater 4 hours ago [-]
Our federal representatives are mostly incompetent and technologically illiterate. When a large project does materialize, the funding is wasted on contractors who actively scam the government.
adamdecaf 5 hours ago [-]
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.
sam1714 5 hours ago [-]
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.
rancar2 4 hours ago [-]
Instant for USA banks doesn’t mean instant for USA banking customers, and deposits can be held per fed and banking policies for variety of reasons especially larger deposits. Also, it’s increasingly common to have financial routing intermediaries playing by different rules and non-insured financial accounts that result in no coverage when the money is spent/lost elsewhere and not returned to end customers. Take a look at Zelle case in New York and the nearly $100M customer funds missing with the Synapse bankruptcy.
My point is that these properly designed national systems should also be considered in the USA as well, and not dismissed because something is kind of working right now with a long list of exceptions to a good and safe experience.
QGQBGdeZREunxLe 4 hours ago [-]
I want to send money between accounts I own in real time. I want to deposit money in brokerage accounts in real time. I want to stop connecting my accounts to services like Wise to make money transfers. I want to pay off a credit card and have that payment clear instantly. FedNow could enable all of this.
Purchases are an afterthought. A system like Brazil's Pix could be rolled out on top of FedNow.
sam1714 4 hours ago [-]
>I want to pay off a credit card and have that payment clear instantly.
Why? At least 2/3 of my cards do same-day ACH (the other is at the same bank, so I can't tell), so the transaction clears in hours. The point of a large credit limit (supposed to be at least 3x normal spend) is so that it doesn't matter anyway.
>FedNow could enable all of this.
Clearing House's RTP has been around since 2017 and it hasn't.
QGQBGdeZREunxLe 4 hours ago [-]
> Why?
A non-hypothetical scenario is that I make a credit card payment via ACH. That money does not leave my account until EOD. Some other transaction causes my balance to fall below the amount required for that transfer. The transfer fails and I am dinged for a missed payment by the CC company (and if the bank sucks they charge a fee too).
Now you could argue this is an accounting issue "Why doesn't the bank reserve the funds until the transfer is complete?" Answer, I don't know ask Capital One. But RTP eliminates the question entirely.
This is a thing already in the UK. I can make a credit card payment from my account using the credit card number. It applies to the balance in real time (realistically in minutes). I don't have to worry that the payment could fail at any point.
sam1714 4 hours ago [-]
>Now you could argue this is an accounting issue "Why doesn't the bank reserve the funds until the transfer is complete?" Answer, I don't know ask Capital One.
Because transaction ordering isn't guaranteed. Say I know that I'm getting paid on the 1st, and I want to spend my paycheck immediately on rent. If the rent transfer gets processed at 11:00 and the payroll provider gets around to doing it at 11:15, I don't want my rent to be rejected.
Therefore, the bank allows transactions to happen and only checks at the end of day for overdraft. They then apply a time-independent ordering to transactions they can reject like paper checks.
In fact, this same scheme applies to banks, Fed only looks at their accounts at end of day, why you have overnight funding.
The major exception to this is debit cards, which Congress made them reject if the money isn't there at time of authorization.
thisislife2 4 hours ago [-]
Is this correct - A very important point is that debit cards offer consumer protections (chargebacks for unsatisfactory goods) - I was under the impression that only credit cards offer chargeback protection?
Liability is covered under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act
> You have zero liability if you report before any unauthorized charges are made. Reporting within two business days caps your liability at $50. However, if you wait over two business days but less than 60 calendar days after your statement is sent, your maximum liability jumps to $500. Beyond 60 days, you could be liable for all unauthorized charges.
carlosjobim 39 minutes ago [-]
It is correct. All Visa and Mastercard debit cards offer these protections, and I would suspect that the smaller brands also do.
Worldwide.
proxyscore 4 hours ago [-]
You can chargeback sepa for longer than cards. And easier
sam1714 4 hours ago [-]
Not in the US. The major card networks give you 120 days versus 56 for SEPA. In fact, that's illegal in the US because Regulation E gives you 60 days after the bank sends the statement.
cmurf 4 hours ago [-]
The Clearing House owns both ACH (automated clearing house)and RTP (real-time payments).
Why do you argue with fanatics? Even your sensible and informative post gets downvoted.
skybrian 5 hours ago [-]
I wonder if Regulation E has anything to do with slow adoption of new tech that's a fraud risk?
yieldcrv 4 hours ago [-]
Real Time Payments exists in the US as The Clearing House (TCH) RTP® Network
US bank has it, Mercury does as well
150g2 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
mlekoszek 4 hours ago [-]
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 2 hours ago [-]
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).
xattt 4 hours ago [-]
How comfortable are you going to be requesting a payment from someone by asking them to rail you?
/s
voidmain0001 2 hours ago [-]
I'm very comfortable. Interac purchased and enhanced the SecureKey Verify.Me service and rebranded it as Interac Identity. It's a reliable way of determining identity and eliminating fraud (I helped integrate it into a company's customer sale process which was rife with fraud). This page on the Real-Time Rail shows that it's definitely using Interac e-Transfer https://www.payments.ca/systems-services/payment-systems/rea...
stackghost 2 hours ago [-]
Whoosh?
"To rail someone" means to have vigorous sex with someone. I believe the poster to whom you replied was making a joke about the name being unfortunate.
Naming is hugely important. I'm always catching downvotes on here for complaining about otherwise-decent open source projects that will never gain traction because they have moronic names like Xonaly or whatever. But I suspect "hey can you rail me 20 bucks" won't be how it gets referred to, and "I don't have cash, does e-transfer work?" will continue to be how it's referred to.
mikepurvis 2 hours ago [-]
As a historical note, "e-transfer" is actually the third major branding of the service.
Acxsys [1] was launched by the Canadian banks in 1996 as a for-profit startup meant to develop online payment solutions, and they original launched the service as "certapay".
Acxsys was folded into Interac in 2018, but I think it was somewhat prior to that the certapay name was discontinued in favour of "email money transfer". Everyone called them e-transfers though, and so eventually Interac gave up on EMT and just went with that name, which is what it is now: https://www.interac.ca/en/resources/personal-resources/perso...
E-transfers sucked for the first decade because there was a several dollar fee associated with them, making them impractical for small amounts. I’m miserly so I low-key dreaded ordering takeout with other staff on night shifts, and having to pay the fee to square up with the person who ordered.
As an aside, there was an e-purse pilot sometime between 1996-1998 in Southern Ontario. It may have been Visa or MC driven rather than Interact/Acxsys.
I remember seeing a booth at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1996 where they demoed a smart card that could be used for web transactions (!) using a floppy drive adaptor (!!).
1990s fintech was wild.
Obscurity4340 4 hours ago [-]
Its already growing on me
dleslie 2 hours ago [-]
We Canadians love our sexual innuendos in language. Asking someone to rail us would fit in nicely: "I'm fucking the dog, can ya rail me enough for a forty?"
mig39 6 hours ago [-]
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 5 hours ago [-]
> 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.
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).
roncesvalles 5 hours ago [-]
Wealthsimple is best known for their robo product, not their banking. It's the Canadian equivalent of Wealthfront.
shawnz 4 hours ago [-]
It's true they built their reputation and brand by being a robo-advisor, but I don't personally know anyone who uses it that way today and many people in my social circle instead use them as a cheap HISA and online self-directed brokerage, perhaps more like Robinhood or Ally
_verandaguy 5 hours ago [-]
Isn't it legally a bank? It provides chequing and savings accounts (registered and unregistered), and it's even CDIC-backed on at least their managed products.
id34 4 hours ago [-]
They don't hold a schedule 1 banking license, so not technically a bank, but a FinTech with a banking partner who holds funds in a way that allows for CDIC backing. As a WS customer, when I send a bill payment to a non-WS account it arrives as "RBC" on the other end so I assume WS holds funds through an RBC account they maintain.
This is the hope of something like RTR - for anyone who can meet the participation requirements, an ability to operate independently of a banking partner who might be your direct competition.
rogerkirkness 5 hours ago [-]
It doesn't do lending directly (as far as I know).
_verandaguy 5 hours ago [-]
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.
a-priori 4 hours ago [-]
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.
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 5 hours ago [-]
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 5 hours ago [-]
Context: The Big Five Canadian banks have 90% of the market, compared to the Big Four US banks's 50% of the market.
mig39 5 hours ago [-]
It does say "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."
MarkusWandel 4 hours ago [-]
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 3 hours ago [-]
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 5 hours ago [-]
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 4 hours ago [-]
The larger business’s still won’t pay the smaller ones any faster. Payment processing wasn’t 90 days.
petcat 6 hours ago [-]
Will be curious to see if this ends up requiring Google/Apple accounts and mobile device attestation in order to work.
muizelaar 6 hours ago [-]
Real-time Rail is for financial institutions to settle transactions not for direct consumer use.
wolttam 6 hours ago [-]
> This new national payment system will transform day-to-day payments for Canadian businesses and consumers by enabling instant speed and settlement.
It does sound like it's for consumers as well
mportela 6 hours ago [-]
It will _eventually_ be exposed to consumers through their banks, but it is financial infrastructure for now.
Marsymars 5 hours ago [-]
This mostly is referencing ETF tranfers that are relevant to consumers - e.g. bill payments and employer pay deposits that currently take several days.
OJFord 5 hours ago [-]
In the same way that PAD is for consumers as well.
disiplus 6 hours ago [-]
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
manas96 53 minutes ago [-]
Is this similar to India's UPI? How will the end user interact with this system?
lbrito 6 hours ago [-]
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 5 hours ago [-]
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)
lytfyre 5 hours ago [-]
For those unfamiliar with the term, a "Crown Corp" is a private company, but wholly owned by the government.
It's not an unusual structure here, the BoC is itself a Crown Corp.
To contrast, Interac, the system used for canadian debit and person to person transfers, is a private company, with ownership by the banks.
If you look at their "about us" section, they just say they are "a corporation". https://www.payments.ca/about/who-we-are Although they were created by a law (Canada Payments Act) and have a public mandate:
Payments Canada has formed a critical part of Canada’s financial market infrastructure for over four decades. The Canadian Payments Association was created by the Canadian Payments Association Act in 1980, now known as the Canadian Payments Act (CP Act).
bawolff 4 hours ago [-]
I think its because its a membership association (like a non profit), where crown corporations are structured like for profit companies where the crown (government) owns all the stock.
canadiantim 5 hours ago [-]
Should we be alarmed?
id34 5 hours ago [-]
PayCan maintains most of the designated systems that underpin the national financial infrastructure - so no, I'd say no more alarmed than anyone is at the structure of ACSS or Lynx
NikolaNovak 5 hours ago [-]
It's a niggle upon a niggle but I do not believe payments Canada is formally a crown corporation. It's primarily a member consortium / industry governance body, though to be muddied further, Minister of Finance does have some oversight responsibilities / accountability.
I always viewed it as one of the "we will govern and regulate ourself so government doesn't fully have to" bodies, but I'm an outsider so happy to be corrected :).
hbn 2 hours ago [-]
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.
Marsymars 2 hours ago [-]
Isn't "etransfer clunky compared to venmo" just a function of how your particular bank has designed their app UI/UX?
hbn 2 hours ago [-]
Yes but I'd like if the market had the ability to compete for better money transfer UI/UX than switch banks because their app is mediocre.
Marsymars 1 hours ago [-]
Switching banks in Canada seems like a much easier proposition to get a better UI/UX for money transfer than any option in the US with Venmo.
You can't switch to alternative apps that use Venmo, and if your network of people uses Venmo, you can't use a different money transfer network.
TMWNN 34 minutes ago [-]
>Switching banks in Canada seems like a much easier proposition to get a better UI/UX for money transfer than any option in the US with Venmo.
That's predicated on there being a better bank UI in the first place. Venmo's UI is far more consumer-friendly than any bank's Zelle payment UI that I know of.
Marsymars 7 minutes ago [-]
Sure, but "I want everyone to standardize on Venmo because their UI is better than banks'" is a very different argument than "I want the market to compete for a better money transfer UI/UX."
It's like the difference between Twitter as the UI/UX leader (humour me and assume that part is true) stomping all over the market due to the network effect, and the ability for Mastodon instances to compete for the best UI/UX.
arkt8 4 hours ago [-]
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 4 hours ago [-]
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.
bawolff 4 hours ago [-]
I guess i dont really understand what this means for the average consumer. Isn't interac etransfer essentially instant?
pcthrowaway 4 hours ago [-]
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.
id34 2 hours ago [-]
You're correct on the first point, and it's worth adding that Interac is a closed network - Interac has no obligation to let anyone participate, and it's been a pain point in the FinTech world that you either have to convince them to let you in (e.g. Wealthsimple) or piggyback on a banking partner (e.g. most other FinTechs.) Maintaining that banking relationship is a big burden for fintechs, especially if you rise to a level where a bank views you as direct competition.
RTR's membership requirements are set by PayCan, who have a mandate to foster competition. Any FinTech who can meet requirements can, in theory, hold a settlement account on RTR and participate. Interac has an incentive to keep the club small, so to speak, and prevent new up-and-comers from cannibalizing their market share.
From a competition lens, the hope here is that RTR levels the playing field for both the big banks and fintechs and opens the door to a lot more consumer-facing innovation. That will, of course, depend on the network effect and who gets onboard.
hbn 2 hours ago [-]
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"
inhumantsar 4 hours ago [-]
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.
cavisne 3 hours ago [-]
Australia launched some sort of realtime payments system a few years ago and it… changed nothing?
Credit cards just have incredible lockin.
ram1500natrluvr 3 hours ago [-]
Didn't interchange fees in Australia get capped this year? I wonder if that'll push people away from credit cards over time.
tamimio 6 hours ago [-]
The article didn’t mention how is this different from current interac, and great to see wealthsimple is already in it!
toomuchtodo 6 hours ago [-]
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).
(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)
smnrchrds 6 hours ago [-]
Has FedNow had any visible effect in the US? Are bill payments and bank to bank transfers now happening instantaneously?
toast0 5 hours ago [-]
My credit unions now offer ach, same day ach, and instant transfers between them.
Same day ach launched with a user fee, so they usually prompt to confirm and offer to send it via normal ach instead, which I find amusing?
I also see instant transfer support at some other places I bank. I can't say if bill payment happens instantly or not, my finances don't run close to the edge, and I don't need to know exactly when a bill pay (which I generally schedule) is taken out and when it's applied; as long as both happen, I'm good.
toomuchtodo 6 hours ago [-]
~$800B/year in annual volume run rate, as of this comment. You can move up to $10M per value message for less than 5 cents, with a max 20 second time to completion SLA.
(i am contributing subject matter expertise to policymakers to make offering FedNow rails to financial services customers a requirement of having a banking license, so I'm a bit biased; this is the only way we'll get off of closed payment rails like Zelle, slow open rails like ACH, or expensive faster legacy credit card rails)
> Are bill payments and bank to bank transfers now happening instantaneously?
Walmart is currently rolling it out. I expect others to start to as you see them surcharge credit card payments (US mobile phone providers, internet providers, etc). It's trivial to build into an app experience, with or without a partner like Plaid (for example).
> “It surprised me,” Henry said of adoption of Walmart’s first iteration of pay-by-bank, which is available online but hasn’t been marketed to customers. “It’s certainly surpassed our expectations of the amount of customers that have registered and actually use the payment type.”
> Walmart’s upgraded pay-by-bank offering will be rolled out in 2025. The transactions will occur over bank technology provider Fiserv’s NOW Network, which integrates with The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow. Until now, large retailers hesitated to launch real time payment options because many banks were not connected to an instant settlement system, meaning their customers would not be able to use the product. NOW Network aims to connect to as many banks as possible to reach 100% of deposit accounts by combining its own network with RTP and FedNow.
Has this lead to any user-visible changes? Like, can you pay your bills on the due date now instead of a couple of business days earlier, not having to worry about it arriving on time?
toomuchtodo 6 hours ago [-]
The most visible change I've seen is that I can move funds instantly between my credit union (which I maintain solely for Zelle access at this time in my financial system) and Wise, for free, others would have to chime in for more pireps/ground truth on this which apps are getting this value in front of users.
Like, can you pay your bills on the due date now instead of a couple of business days earlier
For at least ten years now.
You should visit America. It's nice.
smnrchrds 5 hours ago [-]
I have. It is indeed nice. I haven't interacted with American bill payment infrastructure though during my visits. I read Bank of America website though, and it recommends sending bill payments 5 business days before the due date. Are they incorrect?
> How long does it take for an online payment to reach a biller?
> We recommend scheduling your payments to be made at least 5 business days prior to the actual payment due date on the bill. Scheduling your payments sufficiently in advance of the due date allows enough time for the biller to receive the payment and credit it to your account.
Checking account "Bill Pay" features are a fusion of multiple ideas that you access through a single interface.
Adding a biller to it involves typing in the biller name, providing the account number (e.g. your credit card number) and the ZIP where your bills say to mail a check.
Big billers (like say, Chase credit cards) register with the other big banks and the handful of companies who provide white-labeled platforms for all the small banks and credit unions so that when you input one of their accounts this way, it'll match it up and turn into an electronic transfer which tends to show up pretty quickly (though I assume it does still take a couple of days to fully clear, you'll usually "get credit for it" the day of the payment).
But you can also just add literally any person or company name and address. Say, Bob Smith, 123 Example Street, City, ST 12345 and they'll just mail Bob a check on your behalf. So, those will always require days of time because they have to print and mail a physical check in those cases.
So, the generic advice has to assume it's not matched to an electronic biller profile.
In the case of most banks I've used, they hide this implementation detail slightly -- they just always have you pick the date the payment 'will be received' - and when it's not an electronic biller, you just can't pick a date that's too close.
happyopossum 5 hours ago [-]
That is likely there to allow for billers that don't accept electronic transfers. In those cases, BofA will write and mail a paper check.
rootusrootus 5 hours ago [-]
That's pretty general advice, and probably the safe choice, but anecdotally all of my bill pay ACH transactions these days are executed on the due date. The only exception is if the due date is a weekend, in which case it executes on the preceding business day. It takes usually one day, maximum two before it actually shows up as a withdrawal in the source account, but my payees all recognize the credit on the day of execution.
reaperducer 5 hours ago [-]
That's the worst-case-scenario guidance. Bank of America will print and mail a check if it can't find an electronic method. I have a client who sends me his monthly payment this way.
If you're sending to a known entity like the electric company or a credit card, it's immediate.
As you, yourself noted, "I haven't interacted with American bill payment infrastructure."
Perhaps reserve your comments for things you know about.
smnrchrds 4 hours ago [-]
I didn't comment; I asked a question. You are upset that I asked whether bill payments are instant?
dghlsakjg 4 hours ago [-]
Behind the scenes the money doesn't actually move day of. The people that accept payments are doing you a favor and crediting you before the funds settle.
If you pay a bill on the 1st, the money does not land in the payees account that day (barring in person cash transactions). Best case scenario, funds are available on the 2nd to the payee, although, more commonly, it is several days before the funds are settled. Banks will frequently paper over this showing the funds where they will eventually go, but the clearing house still hasn't finished. If you try to spend too much of that unsettled money, the bank will be glad to inform you that the money isn't actually available yet.
When people talk about instant payments they mean a few seconds, not overnight -maybe.
I used to be in charge of a payments dev team that oversaw several billion dollars of bill payments per year. There is nothing instant about moving money in the US.
creaturemachine 5 hours ago [-]
Two more years until you're off the blacklist.
dcrazy 6 hours ago [-]
Is ~800B a lot? It doesn’t sound like a lot in the context of the U.S. economy.
dghlsakjg 3 hours ago [-]
Considering that Zelle is largely marketed for p2p and not as a general all-purpose payment mechanism, you need to compare it to Venmo or Square. For reference Venmo is on track for ~$400 billion this year.
toomuchtodo 6 hours ago [-]
Draw your attention to YoY upward volume trajectory in my first citation in the comment you replied to. It is still "warming up." TAM is all existing check, ACH, Zelle, and credit card volume. Takes time for folks to get the warm fuzzies and migrate to new systems.
The faster merchants offer instant payments for making payments for free and surcharge credit card rails for payments (to cover the exorbitant cost), the faster volume moves over (imho).
What are the provisions for privacy - preventing my every financial transaction, and thus everything I do involving money, from being centrally tracked, and shared with private institutions?
And what about for preventing government from cutting people off from the financial system (without a court order)? Edit: The US government already commonly does it with non-citizens in the context of other financial systems.
At least, how does that work with FedNow if not Canada's RTR?
EDIT: (clarified and reorganized)
glitchc 4 hours ago [-]
Disclaimer: IANAL
Access to your personal information is governed by PIPEDA for private entities and the Privacy Act for government entities. Additionally each province has its own version of the Privacy Act. Since most of the big banks are headquartered in Toronto, the Ontario's Privacy Act (FIPPA) may also have some jurisdiction but not clear.
toomuchtodo 5 hours ago [-]
That is a function of the legal framework and government regulations of each country an instant payment system operates in. I don't have those specifics per country.
The government can cut you off as easily as Binance asking other platforms to block transactions when called upon, for example. If you don't want to be blocked, use cash or other bearer instruments. Every other traditional finance or crypto ecosystem has a throat to choke. Show me the financial services consumer persona and use cases and I'll walk through the attack path to cut their access to the financial system, as someone who has contributed to building financial infrastructure both in traditional finance, capital markets, and crypto rails for traditional folks.
mmooss 5 hours ago [-]
Thanks.
> That is a function of the legal framework and government regulations of each country
I want to add that it can also be built in on a technical level. Some cryptocurrency already does it (I'm not advocating unregulated monetary systems or blockchain technology, I'm just saying it's possible and already done). For example, transactions could be anonymized, with PKI-type keys available only with a court order.
toomuchtodo 5 hours ago [-]
It can be built, it won't be built. There is no material demand or incentive to require building it. Crypto primitives, in this context, are just ceremony on top of legal systems. "You are trying to solve a people and politics problem with technology."
Sadly, I could imagine it won't be built, or not soon, but things do change; people make change.
I think govermnment and tech leaders greatly underestimate demand for privacy (confidentiality). People in polls consistently say they are worried about government and corporate surveillance and want privacy; you can see the response to Flock cameras right now. Apple, the most successful computer company, clearly sees demand for it, devotes extensive engineering to it, and markets products on that basis. People in other places (e.g., the EU) have passed laws with much greater privacy protection.
The public doesn't understand what's happening - how they are tracked (e.g., all electronic monetary transactions) and what the power/impact of that surveillance is - and they are givin no path forward but to submit. When they have a path (again, Flock, Apple, other countries), they take it. They need tech people to take the lead, educate people in plain English (not 'PKI', etc.), and develop options technical and political - politicians generally are non-technical too.
The solutions require both legal and technical components. With no technical limitation - if data is open on the laptops of everyone in the legal / finance / national security communities - the legal constraints won't work; people will use the data anyway. If there is no legal restriction, they'll obtain access anyway.
2 hours ago [-]
adamdecaf 5 hours ago [-]
> “Canada is the first G7 country to deploy a real-time payment system with mandatory centralized fraud services for use at launch.”
Looks like everything will pass through a single clear text layer managed by the Canadian Government.
frereubu 5 hours ago [-]
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 4 hours ago [-]
In Canada he's also affectionately known as Frankie Bubbles.
id34 4 hours ago [-]
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
rsynnott 4 hours ago [-]
Just as long as they don't make him the minister for health. Transport might also be a bit dubious.
ahmetozer 2 hours ago [-]
is it similar to Turkiye's Fast ?
ChrisArchitect 6 hours ago [-]
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 6 hours ago [-]
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".
"Payment rail" is a very long established term og art.
reaperducer 6 hours ago [-]
How dare you make people learn things!
NiloCK 6 hours ago [-]
Eventually I may learn to spell 'of' on my phone.
OJFord 5 hours ago [-]
> > "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.
This is to be used by people in the same bubble, and it does make sense, it's about as descriptive as it could be.
_verandaguy 5 hours ago [-]
I'd like Up-Goer Five-like language to be used everywhere.
dghlsakjg 3 hours ago [-]
99% of people aren't going to need to touch this. This is underlying infrastructure for banks to build on top of. Most people don't know what a clearing house is or what Payments Canada is or that most of their money passes through them, but they are still perfectly capable of understanding what direct deposit does - which relies on Payments Canada's clearing house.
post-it 5 hours ago [-]
This isn't aimed at 99% of people. This is an interbank tool.
bluebarbet 4 hours ago [-]
Agreed! I was thinking, "That's funny, I thought Canada's rail company was called ViaRail".
icecube123 5 hours ago [-]
The name threw me off as well. This is what happens when you don’t have a good marketing team.
5 hours ago [-]
Scaled 4 hours ago [-]
I really hope US equivalents gain more traction. For too long, we've borne inflated transaction prices and financial censorship.
xunil2ycom 2 hours ago [-]
I kept looking for something referencing the railways. Was disappointed.
100111011111 4 hours ago [-]
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?
julianlam 6 hours ago [-]
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 6 hours ago [-]
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.
verelo 6 hours ago [-]
I don't think this is as unusual are you're implying it might be.
I've moved funds ranging from 10k to $1m between banks in Canada much more than once, and every single time, I go to one and get a draft and drive that draft over to the destination bank. It's just easier...and its absurd.
dcrazy 4 hours ago [-]
When you show up to get a cashier’s check, the teller has very strong proof that you’re not a scammer sitting in Malaysia. And you’re presumably OK with waiting the 1-3 days for the cashier’s check to clear.
This might be true in Canada too: the real estate industry down here is entirely dependent on wire transfers, and yet they are absolutely terrified of wire scams. Maybe if FedNow had existed when I bought my place, I could have gotten a draft slip from my bank and driven it over to the title company.
bawolff 4 hours ago [-]
While i agree it is uncommon - i disagree that banks get much security value from this. Most banks let you do etransfers from a desktop computer just normally. I dont really see what attacks banning rooted phones stop when you can just use your normal linux desktop.
switchbak 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah what did you need that freedom for anyway?
dcrazy 6 hours ago [-]
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.
Marsymars 5 hours ago [-]
> You, as a technically savvy user, could choose to use a dedicated device with an acceptable security posture for your electronic transfers.
Not really, I'm forced to use e.g. RBC because that's where my employer sends their matched retirement savings funds.
ifwinterco 5 hours ago [-]
They mean use an old, vanilla non rooted phone that doesn't set off every alarm in the building for this kind of stuff
Marsymars 3 hours ago [-]
Oh that makes more sense, I somehow read "device" as "service".
gpm 6 hours ago [-]
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.
abdullahkhalids 6 hours ago [-]
Similar experience. No real problems. However, RBC limits the amount I can transfer to 2k per day from browser and like 5k per day from the app.
I don't send anything from TD, but if I buy anything online half the time it forces a 2FA which requires signing into the app and confirming the transaction. I imagine signing into the app might not work nicely if I was on LineageOS.
Marsymars 5 hours ago [-]
I've never used the TD app, but the TD website seems to be designed to be as inconvenient as possible, down to disabling pasting on 2FA input fields.
julianlam 5 hours ago [-]
Used to be the case, yes. However even web-initiated EMTs trigger device confirmation. RBC seems to have made this mandatory for at least my account as of this summer.
MrDOS 5 hours ago [-]
For the last several months, eTransfers initiated from my desktop browser (Firefox on Linux, same as you) have required confirmation via the RBC app on my iPhone. Definitely seems like they have multiple scales of trustworthiness for people/devices/activity. Kind of wish they'd be more transparent about what they are, but I guess that sort of transparency can easily become a vulnerability.
NathanielK 5 hours ago [-]
My phone app isn't verified, so it just sends an RCS message to my phone number. Works for now, but who knows what'll happen.
Marsymars 2 hours ago [-]
These are also obnoxious - RBC has checked whatever box makes Google's RCS web app refuse to render them, so if I'm am my computer, now I have to get up and go find my phone so that I can manually input the code.
b112 5 hours ago [-]
Create a separate firefox profile, all defaults, no addons, and use that only for RBC/banking.
This can easily be launched from the command line via args, when needed.
Unless you let all the tracking scripts, and auth scripts load, it thinks you're evil.
kevin_nisbet 6 hours ago [-]
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 6 hours ago [-]
can't you just use the web interface?
tamimio 5 hours ago [-]
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 6 hours ago [-]
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 4 hours ago [-]
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 2 hours ago [-]
> delivery partners CGI, Deloitte Canada, IBM Canada
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 5 hours ago [-]
This project started in 2016. It just took a decade to roll out.
KellyCriterion 5 hours ago [-]
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.
dmix 5 hours ago [-]
I'm talking about Canada, which started formally planning this in 2016.
The US federal government also released their own version of this in 2023 (US FedNow).
It's been an obvious next step for a while now.
sandworm101 5 hours ago [-]
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.
5 hours ago [-]
shevy-java 3 hours ago [-]
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).
Nztvar 8 minutes ago [-]
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Nztvar 14 minutes ago [-]
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sweeppilot 5 hours ago [-]
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giannischatz 3 hours ago [-]
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.
stiltzkin 3 hours ago [-]
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egao1980 5 hours ago [-]
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purpleidea 4 hours ago [-]
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 6 hours ago [-]
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 6 hours ago [-]
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.
rvz 5 hours ago [-]
No different to a bank transfer. You understand that they cannot be reversed either?
petcat 5 hours ago [-]
There's nothing technically requiring a bank transfer not to be reversed. I can appeal to my bank, legally, and to the receiving bank.
This happens all the time.
xp84 5 hours ago [-]
Suppose you transfer $1000 to me on Monday via ACH (the old thing - pardon my American terminology). If I'm lucky, I can wire that money out of my account, or pull it out in cash, on Wednesday. Maybe Thursday. During that time it's definitely possible you can get the banks to reverse this transfer.
If payment is instant, what that has to mean is that the funds are actually made available to me right away. If you transfer $1000 to me on Monday, and 10 minutes later I've drained my account of funds and disappeared, how can that be "reversed"? Is one of our banks going to just eat it?
If payment is "instant, but the funds are held for several days and can't be spent or transferred" then the payment isn't instant in any meaningful way.
rvz 5 hours ago [-]
There's a clear reason why they don't want to waste their time chasing other banks in recovering your $100 that you sent by mistake and instead warn you to check everything.
The point is they know a transfer cannot be reversed, especially when the money has been spent already.
Even a bank who sent out £130M [0] in error to multiple people still cannot recover all of it after 4 years.
Pix has a reversal mechanism precisely for errors, fraud, etc
greyw 6 hours ago [-]
As understand it, these mechanisms do not help in the case of fraud or disputes. No way to reverse transactions.
rvz 5 hours ago [-]
You can't reverse a bank transfer either and payment services such as Zelle are a favorite for scammers and also cannot be reversed either.
So you have not made a point here.
coevcan 6 hours ago [-]
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.
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 6 hours ago [-]
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 6 hours ago [-]
> 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 5 hours ago [-]
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.
So hey, maybe we should trust the government (who does all federal payment systems) with a new federal payment system.
diego_moita 5 hours ago [-]
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 3 hours ago [-]
> 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 5 hours ago [-]
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
> This new payments system is also ISO 20022, as is Pix.
This is a good step. But the devil is in the details.
And I don't see the details that matter the most:
* Network effects: will it be widespread (from city buses to fruit stands)? Compared to UPI and Pix, Interact has a pathetic history of adoption. What sets RTR apart from Interact?
* Friction: Will it be instantaneous and free of charge? Can it be used by illiterate persons? QR codes? NFC tags?
In Brazil/India those payments systems are used by the most informal of agents: fortune tellers, prostitutes, merchants in crime ridden favelas, ... This is what real mass adoption looks like.
lbrito 4 hours ago [-]
Being from Brazil I'm well aware of the shortcomings of Interac!
Its early to say if this new payment system will be "Canada's Pix" or not, but to me it seems that's the direction they're going:
- The release statement takes great pains to make it clear the payment system is "instantaneous" or "within a few seconds", unlike Interac
- Same ISO standard as Pix
- Some sort of centralization (they just say "centralized fraud prevention"; I'm assuming that means some sort of BoC coordination. Also: "exchanges flowing through the clearing and settlement component")
And most importantly, unlike Interac (a private company), this comes from a quasi-public company with a clear government mandate.
id34 4 hours ago [-]
I think your two points will, in this case, be a question for the financial institutions and fintechs who jump onboard here. RTR won't be immediately consumer-visible, but if FinTech A starts offering some consumer-facing elements ala UPI/Pix using their newfound access to RTR to bypass the traditional banking system and settle directly, then we get there.
I'd look at this as not a consumer product, but a scaffold that allows consumer products to be built ontop of a new system that should, hopefully, allow an end-run around the stuffy traditional infra that is Canadian banking.
4 hours ago [-]
post-it 5 hours ago [-]
Payments Canada is a Crown corporation.
bryanlarsen 6 hours ago [-]
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everfree 6 hours ago [-]
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.
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...
“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.
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...
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.
Yes, this is exactly what I was describing. The deals here tend to suck and are few. Cohere is the exception that proves the rule, if you ask me.
It's always struck me as a little weird that a company has to be within driving distance of Sand Hill road to get attention from a Silicon Valley VC. VCs can't hop on a flight to do some due diligence? Video conferencing isn't good enough for monthly status meetings?
Asking them to operate in new jurisdictions requires a lot of effort and legal know-how; it's not just a matter of cutting a check, but understanding how to navigate the legal landscape for these financial transactions, rights of the investor, tax implications, legal recourse, etc. There's going to be a lot of friction such that they'll either: 1) not seek those opportunities, 2) ask the founders to move to the US if it's a really promising team (see this a lot; was in one startup where a co-founder moved from AUS to the US).
Melanie Perkins talks a bit about this in the Canva episode of How I Built This[0] and how SV wanted them to relocate. AUS government ended up matching some of the investment through a new program so they reached their target for their raise.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/26/971813519/canva-melanie-perki...
Economies of scale. Many investors can review and fund a standard Delaware C corporation without even passing it to outside counsel.
For Canada, not only will you probably special counsel, you may also have additional up front and ongoing accounting costs related to tax treatment, et cetera. You also know that this is potentially a hurdle that start-up will face in every sale and supply-chain contract it signs, unless it relents and just chooses a normal jurisdiction, at which point why don't they just create a Delaware entity and headquarter in Canada?
Accounting and legal stuff is going to be farmed out to licensed professionals regardless of where the company is. And you can't tell me there's a shortage of US + Canada tax or legal specialists.
There are a lot of small-shop and even one-man private investors. Increasingly as wealth accumulates and AI automates.
> you can't tell me there's a shortage of US + Canada tax or legal specialists
They're usually a different partner at a big, expensive firm. Or, if you use a small firm, it means establishing a brand new engagement.
I make personal investments. That would be a dealbreaker for me. If I really liked the company I might try to talk a cross-border friend into running a fund that makes the investment so I don't have to deal with the B.S.
Is it actually true as of 2026? Asking because it sounds like a pure cope.
I was under the impression that Silicon Valley VCs have no issues with funding tech companies based in major US tech hubs outside of SV(especially ones like NYC).
Canada/Japan/Germany/etc. is a whole separate story though, and I am not contesting that (given there are plenty of very obvious reasons for why a SV-based VC firm wouldn't want to invest in a company based in one of those places).
Other than that, Canada is amazing and I miss a lot of aspects.
> 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
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...
https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/new-payme...
Subscriptions are often done via "direct debit" ( since 1970 ), which is safer than letting anyone take money if they have your details, so that's been a solved problem here for a while too.
The downside is the first-movers problem, where the UK having been ahead a couple of decades ago will now likely be behind for a while, because there isn't so much incentive.
Hopefully not as long as the USA has been behind though!
The only way I would use such a system for purchases would be if the merchant refused debit/credit cards, and even then only if there wasn't an alternative merchant I could use.
Part of it is "the curse of good enough": the US has had good credit-card style infrastructure for over a century and digital infrastructure since the POTS days. Part of it is that we lost our appetite for anti-trust in the 80s. Part of it is that the price structure of this infrastructure has wormed its way into everything in a way that is difficult to undo without causing high-visibility inconvenience for low-visibility benefit. The good-enough is the enemy of the good.
Germany is another first mover with decades old banking systems and standards. German banks also dragged their feet supporting SEPA Instant or they added additional fees so that barely anybody wanted to use it.
Then the EU stepped in with regulation: If you support classic SEPA transactions, you also have to support SEPA Instant for the same price (which is almost always free for retail banking accounts). And suddenly banks did.
I think the “recent” change allowing merchants to pass along the credit card fees is a step in the right direction.
I think a lot of people would still choose fraud protection for the extra costs, though.
The government is the only one capable of changing the rules to be included in the list of allowed parties to make it better.
> All U.S. financial institutions (Receiving Depository Financial Institutions or RDFIs) must participate and accept Same Day ACH credit transactions.
> However, sending (originating) Same Day ACH payments is optional for banks and credit unions.
[0]: https://www.nebankmn.com/assets/files/aijt34yD
I've signed up for or seen the contracts for several payment processors across several companies. Rack rate for ACH debit starts at $0.25/trx and goes down to sub-penny at scale. Returns can be high though ($2 per, going down as well).
Edited to add: that's not a defense, I *loathe* ACH. It's a negative-reporting system which is such a pain to deal with.
What I can say is the Fed has draconian rules for pricing its services. The services cannot be subsidized but must be priced to recover costs, including a return on capital similar to what a private payment system (ie from the Clearinghouse) would expect.
For other examples, look at adoption of login.gov vs id.me, and tax filing software solutions.
Because why would Musk possibly be interested in saving money and making the government run more efficiently?
What an egotistical ass hat.
In the USA, no single regulator have that power. Basically only congress can do something like this. The us Congress ain't famous for being fast, you know.
The countries that have innovated the most in regards to automated payments are the ones trying to escape US influence: look at PIX in Brazil, BRICS pay, etc...
In America, the payment system is an oligarchy, they protect their own (the bankers), what need is there for innovation when they are making a killing out of the current inefficiency?
The one place where the US haven't been slow is in stablecoins, making them dollar donominated, to ensure the monopoly the US dollar has on international trade stays strong. That way, when the US has a crisis, they take down the rest of the world too, to the joy of non-US countries.
Pricing for customers varies by network participant. The network prices are cheap.
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.
My point is that these properly designed national systems should also be considered in the USA as well, and not dismissed because something is kind of working right now with a long list of exceptions to a good and safe experience.
Purchases are an afterthought. A system like Brazil's Pix could be rolled out on top of FedNow.
Why? At least 2/3 of my cards do same-day ACH (the other is at the same bank, so I can't tell), so the transaction clears in hours. The point of a large credit limit (supposed to be at least 3x normal spend) is so that it doesn't matter anyway.
>FedNow could enable all of this.
Clearing House's RTP has been around since 2017 and it hasn't.
A non-hypothetical scenario is that I make a credit card payment via ACH. That money does not leave my account until EOD. Some other transaction causes my balance to fall below the amount required for that transfer. The transfer fails and I am dinged for a missed payment by the CC company (and if the bank sucks they charge a fee too).
Now you could argue this is an accounting issue "Why doesn't the bank reserve the funds until the transfer is complete?" Answer, I don't know ask Capital One. But RTP eliminates the question entirely.
This is a thing already in the UK. I can make a credit card payment from my account using the credit card number. It applies to the balance in real time (realistically in minutes). I don't have to worry that the payment could fail at any point.
Because transaction ordering isn't guaranteed. Say I know that I'm getting paid on the 1st, and I want to spend my paycheck immediately on rent. If the rent transfer gets processed at 11:00 and the payroll provider gets around to doing it at 11:15, I don't want my rent to be rejected.
Therefore, the bank allows transactions to happen and only checks at the end of day for overdraft. They then apply a time-independent ordering to transactions they can reject like paper checks.
In fact, this same scheme applies to banks, Fed only looks at their accounts at end of day, why you have overnight funding.
The major exception to this is debit cards, which Congress made them reject if the money isn't there at time of authorization.
https://www.chargeback.io/blog/debit-card-chargebacks-guide
Liability is covered under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act
> You have zero liability if you report before any unauthorized charges are made. Reporting within two business days caps your liability at $50. However, if you wait over two business days but less than 60 calendar days after your statement is sent, your maximum liability jumps to $500. Beyond 60 days, you could be liable for all unauthorized charges.
Worldwide.
https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp
Zelle is pseudo real time. The settlement (mostly/often?) happens by ACH.
https://www.cjsoi.com/articles/fednow-vs-rtp-vs-ach
US bank has it, Mercury does as well
Like all things from any government -- let's see how the rollout goes. But I am cautiously happy to hear about this.
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).
/s
"To rail someone" means to have vigorous sex with someone. I believe the poster to whom you replied was making a joke about the name being unfortunate.
Naming is hugely important. I'm always catching downvotes on here for complaining about otherwise-decent open source projects that will never gain traction because they have moronic names like Xonaly or whatever. But I suspect "hey can you rail me 20 bucks" won't be how it gets referred to, and "I don't have cash, does e-transfer work?" will continue to be how it's referred to.
Acxsys [1] was launched by the Canadian banks in 1996 as a for-profit startup meant to develop online payment solutions, and they original launched the service as "certapay".
Acxsys was folded into Interac in 2018, but I think it was somewhat prior to that the certapay name was discontinued in favour of "email money transfer". Everyone called them e-transfers though, and so eventually Interac gave up on EMT and just went with that name, which is what it is now: https://www.interac.ca/en/resources/personal-resources/perso...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac#History
As an aside, there was an e-purse pilot sometime between 1996-1998 in Southern Ontario. It may have been Visa or MC driven rather than Interact/Acxsys.
I remember seeing a booth at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1996 where they demoed a smart card that could be used for web transactions (!) using a floppy drive adaptor (!!).
1990s fintech was wild.
> 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,
* https://globalnews.ca/news/12142666/real-time-rail-payments-...
This is the hope of something like RTR - for anyone who can meet the participation requirements, an ability to operate independently of a banking partner who might be your direct competition.
> 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...
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.
It does sound like it's for consumers as well
To contrast, Interac, the system used for canadian debit and person to person transfers, is a private company, with ownership by the banks.
If you look at their "about us" section, they just say they are "a corporation". https://www.payments.ca/about/who-we-are Although they were created by a law (Canada Payments Act) and have a public mandate:
Payments Canada has formed a critical part of Canada’s financial market infrastructure for over four decades. The Canadian Payments Association was created by the Canadian Payments Association Act in 1980, now known as the Canadian Payments Act (CP Act).
I always viewed it as one of the "we will govern and regulate ourself so government doesn't fully have to" bodies, but I'm an outsider so happy to be corrected :).
You can't switch to alternative apps that use Venmo, and if your network of people uses Venmo, you can't use a different money transfer network.
That's predicated on there being a better bank UI in the first place. Venmo's UI is far more consumer-friendly than any bank's Zelle payment UI that I know of.
It's like the difference between Twitter as the UI/UX leader (humour me and assume that part is true) stomping all over the market due to the network effect, and the ability for Mastodon instances to compete for the best UI/UX.
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.
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.
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.
RTR's membership requirements are set by PayCan, who have a mandate to foster competition. Any FinTech who can meet requirements can, in theory, hold a settlement account on RTR and participate. Interac has an incentive to keep the club small, so to speak, and prevent new up-and-comers from cannibalizing their market share.
From a competition lens, the hope here is that RTR levels the playing field for both the big banks and fintechs and opens the door to a lot more consumer-facing innovation. That will, of course, depend on the network effect and who gets onboard.
Or giving up and saying "alright, I guess I'll trust you and hope the money comes soon"
Good enough for consumer to consumer use and some online use cases, but definitely not good enough for retail.
Credit cards just have incredible lockin.
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)
Same day ach launched with a user fee, so they usually prompt to confirm and offer to send it via normal ach instead, which I find amusing?
I also see instant transfer support at some other places I bank. I can't say if bill payment happens instantly or not, my finances don't run close to the edge, and I don't need to know exactly when a bill pay (which I generally schedule) is taken out and when it's applied; as long as both happen, I'm good.
https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/fed...
(i am contributing subject matter expertise to policymakers to make offering FedNow rails to financial services customers a requirement of having a banking license, so I'm a bit biased; this is the only way we'll get off of closed payment rails like Zelle, slow open rails like ACH, or expensive faster legacy credit card rails)
> Are bill payments and bank to bank transfers now happening instantaneously?
Walmart is currently rolling it out. I expect others to start to as you see them surcharge credit card payments (US mobile phone providers, internet providers, etc). It's trivial to build into an app experience, with or without a partner like Plaid (for example).
> “It surprised me,” Henry said of adoption of Walmart’s first iteration of pay-by-bank, which is available online but hasn’t been marketed to customers. “It’s certainly surpassed our expectations of the amount of customers that have registered and actually use the payment type.”
> Walmart’s upgraded pay-by-bank offering will be rolled out in 2025. The transactions will occur over bank technology provider Fiserv’s NOW Network, which integrates with The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow. Until now, large retailers hesitated to launch real time payment options because many banks were not connected to an instant settlement system, meaning their customers would not be able to use the product. NOW Network aims to connect to as many banks as possible to reach 100% of deposit accounts by combining its own network with RTP and FedNow.
Walmart Plans Instant Bank Payments, Cutting Out Card Networks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41593450 - September 2024 (3 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632105 (additional citations)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433164 (additional citations)
https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow-servic... maintains a list of banks and financial service providers currently on FedNow rails.
For at least ten years now.
You should visit America. It's nice.
> How long does it take for an online payment to reach a biller?
> We recommend scheduling your payments to be made at least 5 business days prior to the actual payment due date on the bill. Scheduling your payments sufficiently in advance of the due date allows enough time for the biller to receive the payment and credit it to your account.
https://info.bankofamerica.com/en/digital-banking/online-bil...
Adding a biller to it involves typing in the biller name, providing the account number (e.g. your credit card number) and the ZIP where your bills say to mail a check.
Big billers (like say, Chase credit cards) register with the other big banks and the handful of companies who provide white-labeled platforms for all the small banks and credit unions so that when you input one of their accounts this way, it'll match it up and turn into an electronic transfer which tends to show up pretty quickly (though I assume it does still take a couple of days to fully clear, you'll usually "get credit for it" the day of the payment).
But you can also just add literally any person or company name and address. Say, Bob Smith, 123 Example Street, City, ST 12345 and they'll just mail Bob a check on your behalf. So, those will always require days of time because they have to print and mail a physical check in those cases.
So, the generic advice has to assume it's not matched to an electronic biller profile.
In the case of most banks I've used, they hide this implementation detail slightly -- they just always have you pick the date the payment 'will be received' - and when it's not an electronic biller, you just can't pick a date that's too close.
If you're sending to a known entity like the electric company or a credit card, it's immediate.
As you, yourself noted, "I haven't interacted with American bill payment infrastructure."
Perhaps reserve your comments for things you know about.
If you pay a bill on the 1st, the money does not land in the payees account that day (barring in person cash transactions). Best case scenario, funds are available on the 2nd to the payee, although, more commonly, it is several days before the funds are settled. Banks will frequently paper over this showing the funds where they will eventually go, but the clearing house still hasn't finished. If you try to spend too much of that unsettled money, the bank will be glad to inform you that the money isn't actually available yet.
When people talk about instant payments they mean a few seconds, not overnight -maybe.
I used to be in charge of a payments dev team that oversaw several billion dollars of bill payments per year. There is nothing instant about moving money in the US.
The faster merchants offer instant payments for making payments for free and surcharge credit card rails for payments (to cover the exorbitant cost), the faster volume moves over (imho).
Brazil's Pix (https://whatispix.com/) is what desired target end state looks like imho.
Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48052371 - May 2026 (383 comments)
What are the provisions for privacy - preventing my every financial transaction, and thus everything I do involving money, from being centrally tracked, and shared with private institutions?
And what about for preventing government from cutting people off from the financial system (without a court order)? Edit: The US government already commonly does it with non-citizens in the context of other financial systems.
At least, how does that work with FedNow if not Canada's RTR?
EDIT: (clarified and reorganized)
Access to your personal information is governed by PIPEDA for private entities and the Privacy Act for government entities. Additionally each province has its own version of the Privacy Act. Since most of the big banks are headquartered in Toronto, the Ontario's Privacy Act (FIPPA) may also have some jurisdiction but not clear.
The government can cut you off as easily as Binance asking other platforms to block transactions when called upon, for example. If you don't want to be blocked, use cash or other bearer instruments. Every other traditional finance or crypto ecosystem has a throat to choke. Show me the financial services consumer persona and use cases and I'll walk through the attack path to cut their access to the financial system, as someone who has contributed to building financial infrastructure both in traditional finance, capital markets, and crypto rails for traditional folks.
> That is a function of the legal framework and government regulations of each country
I want to add that it can also be built in on a technical level. Some cryptocurrency already does it (I'm not advocating unregulated monetary systems or blockchain technology, I'm just saying it's possible and already done). For example, transactions could be anonymized, with PKI-type keys available only with a court order.
https://xkcd.com/538/
I think govermnment and tech leaders greatly underestimate demand for privacy (confidentiality). People in polls consistently say they are worried about government and corporate surveillance and want privacy; you can see the response to Flock cameras right now. Apple, the most successful computer company, clearly sees demand for it, devotes extensive engineering to it, and markets products on that basis. People in other places (e.g., the EU) have passed laws with much greater privacy protection.
The public doesn't understand what's happening - how they are tracked (e.g., all electronic monetary transactions) and what the power/impact of that surveillance is - and they are givin no path forward but to submit. When they have a path (again, Flock, Apple, other countries), they take it. They need tech people to take the lead, educate people in plain English (not 'PKI', etc.), and develop options technical and political - politicians generally are non-technical too.
The solutions require both legal and technical components. With no technical limitation - if data is open on the laptops of everyone in the legal / finance / national security communities - the legal constraints won't work; people will use the data anyway. If there is no legal restriction, they'll obtain access anyway.
Looks like everything will pass through a single clear text layer managed by the Canadian Government.
> "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".
"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.
This is to be used by people in the same bubble, and it does make sense, it's about as descriptive as it could be.
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.
I've moved funds ranging from 10k to $1m between banks in Canada much more than once, and every single time, I go to one and get a draft and drive that draft over to the destination bank. It's just easier...and its absurd.
This might be true in Canada too: the real estate industry down here is entirely dependent on wire transfers, and yet they are absolutely terrified of wire scams. Maybe if FedNow had existed when I bought my place, I could have gotten a draft slip from my bank and driven it over to the title company.
You, as a technically savvy user, could choose to use a dedicated device with an acceptable security posture for your electronic transfers.
Not really, I'm forced to use e.g. RBC because that's where my employer sends their matched retirement savings funds.
I don't send anything from TD, but if I buy anything online half the time it forces a 2FA which requires signing into the app and confirming the transaction. I imagine signing into the app might not work nicely if I was on LineageOS.
This can easily be launched from the command line via args, when needed.
Unless you let all the tracking scripts, and auth scripts load, it thinks you're evil.
Sometimes I think that the slow speed of moving money is a feature, not a bug.
oh no
The US federal government also released their own version of this in 2023 (US FedNow).
It's been an obvious next step for a while now.
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.
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.
This happens all the time.
If payment is instant, what that has to mean is that the funds are actually made available to me right away. If you transfer $1000 to me on Monday, and 10 minutes later I've drained my account of funds and disappeared, how can that be "reversed"? Is one of our banks going to just eat it?
If payment is "instant, but the funds are held for several days and can't be spent or transferred" then the payment isn't instant in any meaningful way.
The point is they know a transfer cannot be reversed, especially when the money has been spent already.
Even a bank who sent out £130M [0] in error to multiple people still cannot recover all of it after 4 years.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/30/santander-b...
So you have not made a point here.
> 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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
* 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...
This is a good step. But the devil is in the details.
And I don't see the details that matter the most:
* Network effects: will it be widespread (from city buses to fruit stands)? Compared to UPI and Pix, Interact has a pathetic history of adoption. What sets RTR apart from Interact?
* Friction: Will it be instantaneous and free of charge? Can it be used by illiterate persons? QR codes? NFC tags?
In Brazil/India those payments systems are used by the most informal of agents: fortune tellers, prostitutes, merchants in crime ridden favelas, ... This is what real mass adoption looks like.
Its early to say if this new payment system will be "Canada's Pix" or not, but to me it seems that's the direction they're going:
- The release statement takes great pains to make it clear the payment system is "instantaneous" or "within a few seconds", unlike Interac - Same ISO standard as Pix - Some sort of centralization (they just say "centralized fraud prevention"; I'm assuming that means some sort of BoC coordination. Also: "exchanges flowing through the clearing and settlement component")
And most importantly, unlike Interac (a private company), this comes from a quasi-public company with a clear government mandate.
> 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.