Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
What Role Will Interac Play in Open Banking in Canada?
Aug 27, 2025
Image: Freepik AI
Canada is preparing for the launch of “Consumer-Driven Banking” in early 2026. This promises to be a system that will give people more control over how their financial data is shared. The main goal is to replace current risky practices, including screen scraping, with safe, consent-based data exchange. The government has made it its aim to focus on trust, clearer guidelines and regulations, to provide a system where security comes first, while still encouraging innovative services.
Interac’s Established Presence and Everyday Uses
For more than 30 years, Interac has been the foundation of Canada’s payment system. The payment gateway is well-known for debit payments, ABMs, and the popular e-Transfer service. In 2024, Canadians sent more than one billion e-Transfers, transferring more than $132 billion.
The reach of Interac extends further than banks and credit unions. Its services are also used in online services. For instance, with online casino platforms, players rely on the same fast and trusted payments they use with their bank. The payment option allows players to access the same bonuses, gaming library, and promotions whether they use an e-wallet, cryptocurrencies, or traditional banking methods. With Interac e-transfer casinos, players can expect a fast, convenient, and highly secure way to fund their accounts with strong protections against fraud and theft.
Additionally, Interac is widely accepted for online purchases in Canada because it supports secure direct payments through Interac Online or Interac e-Transfer, which many online merchants and platforms integrate. This widespread trust and familiarity with Interac in everyday payments reflects the confidence Canadians place in its security and convenience. This acceptance and reputation for safe transactions make Interac an ideal foundation for supporting the secure, consent-based data sharing envisioned by Canada’s open banking framework
Why Interac Is Well-Suited for Open Banking
Interac already connects banks, credit unions, payment processors, and more than 1.4 million point-of-sale terminals across the country. It also has significant experience with APIs, tokenization, and authentication, which are exactly the kinds of tools that open banking requires.
Equally important is Interac’s reputation for security. With three decades of experience, Interac has well-established governance frameworks, security protocols, and operational standards. These can easily be adapted and extended to open banking APIs to accelerate compliance and risk management processes.
Interac as the Backbone for APIs
Standardized APIs are central to consumer-driven banking. Interac has already been running pilot projects with dozens of third-party providers that want to connect directly to financial data. The network includes shared services that are vital for open banking, such as identity verification, consent management, and secure data transfer.
It makes sense to use infrastructure that already exists. This could speed things up considerably. Instead of starting from scratch, Canada can build on a network that already processes millions of transactions every day. Interac’s reliability, low downtime, and widespread acceptance mean both banks and fintechs are more likely to support a model that is proven and trusted.
Speeding up the Rollout Through Scale and Readiness
Interac’s experience helps reduce the time needed for open banking to become a reality. With ready-made standards and existing relationships across the financial sector, deployment can move faster than in countries that had to build new systems entirely. This is significant, given that the federal government has set early 2026 as the target date.
Interac also works closely with regulators. It advises on governance, security, and consumer protection, and it has teamed up with fintech incubators to test new applications in controlled environments. The focus has been on creating clear, transparent consent processes for consumers, ensuring people understand and control how their data is used.
Recent Developments and Collaboration in 2025
In 2025, important steps were taken to prepare for rollout. Despite mixed reactions and backlash, Parliament passed legislation requiring accredited entities to use secure APIs, annual consent renewal for data sharing, and oversight by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. Major banks, including RBC and TD, continued expanding their API systems and entered new partnerships with fintechs to test services ahead of the launch.
See: Canada’s Open Banking Journey: Interview with Francois Lasne, advisory board member of The Berlin Group
Interac, for its part, strengthened its focus on fraud prevention. The appointment of David Bruyea as Group Head of Financial Crimes signalled an investment in protecting the system at a time when trust will be vital. With consumers still learning what consumer-driven banking means for them, Interac is positioning itself as the trusted partner that can balance innovation with security. Its long-standing role in Canadian finance, paired with ongoing developments in 2025, places it at the centre of the country’s move toward open banking in 2026.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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