EY Report October 2023 | Page 12

“ The common themes among impressive fintechs are that they ’ re all very provocative in the way they go to market . They ’ re very forward-thinking in their solutions ”

DIANA HALDER PARTNER , PAYMENTS PRACTICE LEADER , EY CANADA
implementation of email money transfer by Interac , a form of faster peer-to-peer payments where deposit instructions and notifications are sent over email . Now the country ’ s payment ecosystem is moving Canada ’ s real-time payments into a new era .
“ What we ’ re doing is setting up a centralised real-time payments network with centralised clearing and settlement capabilities on a more modern technology stack ,” Halder says . “ That would be comparable to the FedNow in the US or AP + in Australia .”
She says that it would be ideal if Canada had the range of choice that the US has ( for example Zelle , TCH ’ s real-time payments and FedNow ), but the lack of competition has made that challenging . “ Right now in Canada , we have one option . It would be great for consumers and businesses to have more choices from public or private realtime payments networks .”
A protected financial ecosystem isn ’ t the only consideration for Canada ’ s modernisation agenda ; the lack of widespread education on the benefits of
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