Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Venture Funding and Building
Canada Fintech Forum 2026 Returns to Montréal September 14–15
August 20, 2026 | NCFA Resource | FinTech and Alternative Finance, Fintech and Networking Events, Artificial Intelligence And Data
Two Days of Fintech, Finance and Innovation in Montréal
On September 14 and 15, 2026, the Canada Fintech Forum 2026 returns to Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth in Montréal. Organized by Station Fintech and powered by Finance Montréal, the Forum brings together leaders from financial institutions, fintechs, investment, technology and the public sector. NCFA is supporting the forum as a visibility partner for this year's Forum and will be sharing event and program updates with Canada's fintech community ahead of September.
CANADA FINTECH FORUM 2026
September 14–15, 2026 · Montréal
Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth
1,500+ Attendees · 70 Speakers · 120 Startups
Day 1· Open & Embedded Finance
Day 2· Enterprise Infrastructure & AI
What's On the 2026 Program?
The preliminary program divides the Forum into two focused days, beginning with open and embedded finance before turning to enterprise infrastructure and artificial intelligence.
Day 1 · September 14 · Open & Embedded Finance
The first day examines how new data access, payment rails and embedded financial products are changing competition and distribution. Sessions include the market effects of open finance, the future of Canada's payments ecosystem from real-time payments to stablecoins, autonomous transactions, sustainable finance and the risks and oversight questions surrounding embedded credit.
Several of those discussions connect directly with developments already underway in Canada. Canada open banking intelligence tracks the proposed consumer-driven banking rules now defining data access, accreditation, consent and liability, while Canada's financial infrastructure opening follows the parallel expansion of payments access and new market participation.
Day 2 · September 15 · Enterprise Infrastructure & AI
The second day focuses on how financial institutions are deploying and governing new technology inside regulated operations. Topics include AI-driven financial decision making, AI-native finance versus legacy systems, RegTech automation, the growing AI cybersecurity arms race and whether financial institutions are ready for quantum computing.
Featured Speakers
The current speaker lineup brings together senior leaders from banking, insurance, fintech and artificial intelligence. Confirmed speakers include
- Michael Denham, Executive Vice-President and Vice-Chair at National Bank of Canada
- Maksims Volkovs, SVP and Chief AI Scientist at TD
- Tess Bloch, Co-Founder and COO of Spade
- Peter Zaffino, Chairman and CEO of AIG
The broader Forum is designed to bring financial institutions and fintech companies into direct conversation with investors, regulators, technology providers and other ecosystem participants.
Why Attend
The Forum is built around business access as much as conference content. Attendees can compare market priorities with decision makers, identify potential customers and partners, meet investors and fintech founders, and get a clearer view of what financial institutions are looking to buy, build or integrate next.
Networking includes curated business meetings and dedicated spaces for exchanges between institutions, fintechs and investors. September 14 also includes ElleFintech, a fireside-chat breakfast highlighting fintech companies founded or led by women.
For fintech founders, the concentration of 120 expected startups alongside major financial institutions and investors creates a vibrant opportunity to test market assumptions, build relationships and understand where buyers and capital providers are placing their attention.
Registration
Reserve your seat. Register for the Canada Fintech Forum 2026 Now
Eligible fintech startups can apply for 75% off registration for up to two attendees per company -> Apply for the startup rate.
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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Bank of Canada Finds Hiring Weakness In AI Exposed Jobs
August 20, 2026 | NCFA Insight | Artificial Intelligence And Data, Public Sector Policy And Industrial Strategy
Weaker Hiring In Jobs With Greater AI Exposure
On August 20, 2026, Bank of Canada research on AI and Canadian hiring shows that people coming from occupations with greater artificial intelligence exposure are having a harder time finding work than people coming from less exposed occupations. During 2015 to 2019, the estimated job finding rate at the fully exposed end of the Bank's model was 2.2 percentage points lower than at the unexposed end. In 2025, it was 13.9 points lower. The comparable difference in job separation rates barely changed.
The Bank isn't saying AI alone caused the gap. The pandemic, immigration, trade changes and weaker labour market conditions also affected hiring. What stands out is where the difference appears. People in more exposed occupations aren't leaving or losing jobs much faster, but those trying to find work are having more difficulty getting hired.
Getting Hired May Weaken Before Jobs Disappear
The occupations near the top of the Bank's exposure ranking are heavy on information work. Data entry clerks, receptionists, payroll administrators and accounting clerks, banking and insurance clerks, records management staff, customer service representatives and office support workers all rank highly. Jobs that depend more on physical work, specialized human skills or judgment generally rank lower.
The Bank estimates the relationship using Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey data and occupation level AI exposure scores. No workers in the data sit at exactly 0% or 100% exposure, so those endpoints are estimates rather than two observed groups of workers. The Bank describes the comparison as an upper bound.
Statistics Canada research on AI and employment provides an important check. Employment generally grew from November 2022 through December 2025 across occupations with different levels of potential AI exposure. Vacancies in highly exposed occupations where AI may replace more tasks also fell at a similar rate to vacancies in occupations with lower exposure.
See AI Usage Data Shows Early Labour Market Strain
Those findings can coexist. Overall employment can hold up while people trying to enter or reenter some occupations take longer to get hired. The Bank also finds that younger workers are more concentrated than older workers in several occupations with moderate or high AI exposure. That puts more attention on entry points into the labour market, not just on whether established workers are being laid off.
Companies Can Reduce Hiring Without Large Layoffs
A company doesn't need a large round of layoffs to use less labour. It can replace fewer people who leave, open fewer junior positions or use the same team to handle more work. The Bank's August data show why layoff announcements alone are a poor measure of the employment effect.
A separate Bank of Canada survey of Canadian firms points in the same direction. Firms expected AI to have little effect on employment over the following year but modest net negative effects over three years. They expected the impact to build over time rather than arrive as an immediate employment shock.
New Bank of Canada evidence on business AI adoption adds another layer. More than two-thirds of surveyed business leaders said they personally use AI in a typical work week, but only 8% of businesses reported significant AI use in core operations. Over the next three years, 23% expect AI to reduce employment while 11% expect a positive employment effect. That suggests hiring effects could emerge before broad operational transformation is complete, leaving a sizeable gap between using AI tools and redesigning businesses around them.
If AI lets companies produce more with existing teams, labour demand can weaken first through vacancies, replacement hiring and junior recruitment. If those measures deteriorate in the occupations where AI use is rising fastest, the case for an AI related employment effect gets stronger. If they recover with the rest of the labour market, it gets weaker.
See Can Headline Inflation Hide AI Job Losses?
The Bank of Canada July AI employment paper approached the issue through an economic model rather than observed labour market outcomes. It separates AI that helps workers produce more from automation that transfers tasks away from workers. Both reduce labour demand in the model, with the larger effect coming when machines take over tasks. The August research adds observed Canadian labour data without proving that AI caused the hiring gap.
Finance Shows How The Job Mix Can Change
Finance is a useful place to watch because AI use is already high and several financial jobs rank among the Bank's more exposed occupations. Statistics Canada found that 40.4% of finance and insurance businesses used AI to produce goods or deliver services during the previous 12 months, more than twice the 19.2% Canadian business average.
The Bank's 2026 Financial System Survey shows a similar pattern among major financial organizations. Nearly all 54 respondents reported using AI, although most still described adoption as limited or moderate. They generally use it to complete existing tasks faster while keeping people responsible for critical decisions carrying financial, legal or reputational consequences.
Financial firms also have an implementation problem. In the Bank survey, 58% of respondents reported difficulty integrating AI into existing systems and workflows. Another 56% cited weak AI literacy among current employees or difficulty hiring and retaining people with specific AI expertise.
Governed financial AI workflows show why both things can happen at once. Software can collect information, compare records, prepare research, identify accounting breaks and assemble know your customer files before a person reviews the work or makes the decision. A firm may need less manual work around a process while placing more value on employees who understand the business well enough to challenge the output.
That becomes especially important for junior roles. Employees have traditionally learned finance by preparing files, reconciling records, reviewing documents, gathering evidence and completing first pass analysis before taking responsibility for harder decisions. AI's hidden costs in replacing junior workers include weakening some of those early career training routes. If AI removes more of that routine work, firms may eventually need fewer junior hires while still competing for experienced analysts, operators, compliance professionals and risk managers.
Current evidence doesn't show that this has happened across Canadian finance. It does show high AI use, exposed information work and shortages of people with the skills to implement and oversee the technology. For founders, financial institutions and investors, the employment question is therefore bigger than how many jobs AI eliminates. It's also about which jobs companies stop adding, which skills become more valuable and how firms build experienced people when some of the work that trained them is automated.
Talking Point
If AI reduces the number of people companies need to hire before it reduces existing headcount, how quickly will Canada's employment data show the change?
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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Choosing a Partner to Build Financial Software That Actually Ships
Aug 20 2026
Custom fintech software development has shifted from a competitive edge into a plain survival requirement and any founder who watched a promising payment idea die inside a bank's legacy stack knows why. The financial sector runs on trust and trust runs on software that holds together at the worst possible moment. A wallet freezes mid-transfer. A lending engine miscalculates a rate. Users walk away and regulators start asking pointed questions. The choice of who writes that code weighs far heavier than most teams admit when they sign a first contract.
Why do two fintech products with nearly identical features behave so differently once they hit the market? The gap usually hides inside the engineering. One team treated compliance as an afterthought and burned months patching security holes before launch. The other wove encryption, tokenization and audit trails into the architecture from the first sprint. This article walks through what separates capable providers from the rest and names five companies worth a closer look.
What Custom Fintech Software Really Means
Ready-made financial tools solve generic problems for generic users. Custom development solves your problem, for your users, under your regulatory conditions. The contrast surfaces in details no template can foresee. A specific cross-border corridor. An unusual credit-scoring model. A niche compliance regime that exists in a single country and nowhere else.
Building financial software differs sharply from building a social app or an online store. Money carries legal weight. A glitch in a shopping cart irritates a buyer for an afternoon. A glitch in a payout system triggers a fraud probe or freezes a client's whole treasury. That reality raises the stakes on every architectural call and explains why seasoned fintech teams fuss over things invisible from the outside.
The Regulatory Weight Nobody Escapes
Every serious platform here lives beneath a thick layer of rules. PCI DSS governs how card data moves. AML and KYC dictate how identities get checked. PSD2 and its successor PSD3 shape open banking across Europe, while GDPR guards personal data at each step. Skip any of these and a launch turns into a lawsuit waiting to happen.
See: Canada’s Open Banking Regulatory Intelligence Guide
A strong partner treats those standards as design inputs, never as obstacles. Compliance-first engineering means the architecture already expects the audit, so payment systems and digital wallets reach production audit-ready rather than getting retrofitted under pressure. That single habit rescues months and protects reputations.
Five Companies Building Fintech Software Worth Watching
The list below reflects providers with real depth in financial technology. Andersen leads it for reasons grounded in scale, focus and delivery record, not marketing noise.
| Rank | Company | Core strength | Notable focus |
| 1 | Andersen | Full-cycle fintech delivery | Banking, payments, lending, DeFi |
| 2 | EPAM | Enterprise-scale engineering | Large financial institutions |
| 3 | Luxoft | Capital markets systems | Trading and risk platforms |
| 4 | Softjourn | Payment and card processing | Prepaid and gift-card tech |
| 5 | Intellias | Digital banking products | Mobile-first finance apps |
1. Andersen
Andersen tops the list as a fintech software development company building tailored platforms for banks, neobanks, startups and established institutions. The firm reports more than 3600 fintech specialists and over 1000 delivered projects and its record spans a UK mass-payout platform handling over 500,000 transactions every fifteen minutes plus an AI-driven lending system that cut overdue debt and reached fourteen countries. Compliance with GDPR, PSD2/PSD3, AML/KYC and PCI DSS sits at the core from day one, which earns the top position.
2. EPAM
EPAM built its name on large, complex engineering programs for global enterprises, with financial services near the center of that work. Banks turn to the firm when they need to modernize sprawling legacy estates without pausing daily operations. Its strength lies in steering big teams across many countries while keeping quality steady.
3. Luxoft
Luxoft carved a strong niche in capital markets and trading technology long before fintech became a buzzword. The company grasps the punishing latency and accuracy demands of exchanges, risk engines and settlement systems. Firms wrestling with high-frequency data and derivatives often find its specialized skill hard to match elsewhere.
4. Softjourn
Softjourn concentrates on payments, card processing and prepaid technology, a space where small slips cause outsized damage. Its focus on gift cards, loyalty programs and processing platforms brings deep practical knowledge of transaction flows. Clients value the narrow expertise over any promise to cover every corner of finance.
5. Intellias
Intellias closes the list with a track record in digital banking and mobile-first products. The company helps banks and challengers ship consumer apps that feel modern without loosening security. Its ease with customer-facing design pairs well with the backend discipline that payments demand.
How to Read This List for Your Own Decision
A ranking is a starting point rather than a verdict. Your ideal partner hinges on your product, your budget and your regulatory geography. Weigh these factors before you commit:
- Domain depth in your exact niche, whether lending, wallets, or trading
- Regulatory fluency in the jurisdictions where you truly operate
- Delivery model that matches your appetite for control against speed
- Scaling flexibility so the team grows or shrinks without chaos
- Long-term support that keeps the platform stable after launch
Andersen meets each of these across its published record, which is exactly why it holds the leading spot.
Conclusion
Financial software carries a weight that ordinary applications never feel and the partner you pick decides whether your product earns trust or leaks it. The five companies above each bring real strength, yet Andersen blends scale, compliance discipline and a delivery history stretching across payments, lending and digital assets. For teams weighing serious custom fintech software development, that blend makes a sensible place to open the conversation.
FAQ
Can a startup afford custom fintech development, or does it belong only to banks?
Startups often begin with a lean MVP that tests demand before heavy spending. This path de-risks funding and shortens time-to-market, so cost scales with ambition rather than crushing an early budget.
Why does compliance push the price up so much?
Meeting PCI DSS, AML and GDPR calls for encryption, audit trails and testing that generic apps skip. These safeguards protect users and pass audits, so they belong in the budget from the start.
How long before a fintech product reaches the market?
Timelines follow scope, though agile processes, reusable components and DevOps pipelines trim release cycles noticeably. A focused MVP ships far sooner than a full enterprise platform.
What happens to my software after launch?
Serious providers offer continuous monitoring, security updates and compliance audits as user numbers climb. Andersen, for one, folds maintenance into the full lifecycle rather than bolting it on later.
Is blockchain a must for a modern fintech app?
Not always. Blockchain fits digital assets, DeFi and transparent settlement, yet plenty of strong products run happily on cloud and API architecture without it.
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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FINRA Cybersecurity Practices For Member Firms
August 19, 2026 | NCFA Resource | Cybersecurity And Fraud, Risk Compliance And Regtech, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure
12 Controls For Cyber Risk, Vendors, Access And Recovery
In August 2026, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority published Cybersecurity Effective Practices, a 12-part framework for FINRA member firms reviewing cybersecurity programs, controls and operating procedures. A firm can use the resource as a structured checklist for who owns cybersecurity, which systems and vendors create risk, who can access sensitive data, how threats are detected, and whether the business can recover when systems fail. FINRA designed the practices to scale with firm size, business model, technology complexity and risk profile.
What It Does In Practice
FINRA organizes the resource around 12 areas:
- governance
- risk management
- third party risk management
- asset management
- access control and identity management
- data protection
- security awareness and training
- vulnerability and patch management
- security monitoring
- threat intelligence and information sharing
- incident response and reporting
- resilience and recovery
The framework starts with accountability and risk ownership. FINRA recommends a designated cybersecurity lead, regular reporting to senior decision makers, documented policies and periodic reviews, while also making cyber risk part of decisions about new technology, systems and operating changes. From there, firms are expected to identify the information, systems and business functions they depend on, assess threats such as ransomware, insider activity and vendor exposure, test important systems for weaknesses and revisit those risks when technology or operations change.
Third party risk receives detailed treatment. FINRA treats vendors with access to customer information or critical systems as part of the firm’s security perimeter. Firms should know which vendors have access, understand important fourth party relationships and identify which providers support critical operations. Contracts can address audit rights, data handling, breach notification and visibility into subcontractors, while ongoing oversight should include access monitoring and a documented process for removing access and handling customer information when a relationship ends.
That concern extends beyond US broker dealers. Weak access control governance can expose sensitive information when a partner or service provider retains permissions that are unnecessary or poorly monitored. FINRA’s guidance connects vendor governance with the practical question of who can access systems and data, for how long, and under what controls.
Asset management and access control fit naturally together. FINRA recommends keeping a current inventory of hardware, software, cloud services and data flows, assigning owners to important assets and identifying systems that no longer receive security updates. Once firms know what they have, they can control who gets access through unique credentials, role based permissions, multifactor authentication, periodic entitlement reviews, segregation of duties and least privilege. Access should also be changed or removed promptly when employees change roles or leave.
Data protection, training and patching cover another part of the operating picture. Firms are encouraged to classify sensitive data, encrypt it at rest and in transit where feasible, control retention and protect backups, including with immutable or air gapped storage. FINRA also recommends ongoing employee training, role specific instruction for staff with sensitive access and phishing simulations backed by records of participation. Vulnerability management should include regular scanning, risk based patch priorities and verification that remediation work was completed rather than assumed.
Who Gets Value
The primary users are FINRA member broker dealers, including compliance teams, cybersecurity leaders, technology teams, operations executives and senior management. Smaller firms can use the 12 areas to identify where basic controls are missing without trying to copy the cybersecurity program of a much larger institution, while larger firms can use the same structure to review whether responsibilities, documentation and technical controls are working together.
Technology providers, managed security firms, consultants and RegTech companies serving broker dealers can also use the resource to understand what clients may expect around access, logging, vendor controls, data handling, patching, incident response and recovery. Boards and senior executives can use it as a governance checklist because FINRA makes cybersecurity ownership, management reporting, resource decisions and documented risk acceptance part of the program rather than leaving cyber risk entirely with the technology team.
Strengths And Limits
The main strength is that FINRA connects governance directly to operating controls. A firm can follow the framework from senior accountability through asset inventories, identity controls, encryption, training, monitoring and recovery testing, which makes the document more useful than a high level cyber policy statement.
Third party risk is also handled with more depth than a basic checklist. Firms are expected to understand vendor dependencies, monitor privileged access, address fourth parties and plan how systems and data will be handled when a provider relationship ends. Security monitoring extends that discipline to unusual access, suspicious data transfers, system changes and privileged accounts, with logs retained long enough to support operations, investigations, forensic work and applicable recordkeeping requirements.
The framework also includes threat intelligence, incident response and recovery. FINRA recommends using relevant threat feeds, updating defenses as attack methods change and participating in trusted information sharing networks. Incident response focuses on how a firm detects, escalates and contains an event, while recovery planning deals with how critical systems and data return to service afterward. Tested backups, tabletop exercises, offline procedures and defined Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time Objectives all help firms decide how much data loss and downtime different systems can tolerate.
The main limitation is jurisdiction. FINRA developed the resource for US member firms and connects several practices to US requirements, including SEC Regulations S-P and S-ID, FINRA Rules 3110 and 4370, and Exchange Act recordkeeping rules. The document also doesn't create new legal or regulatory requirements or reinterpret existing ones. For Canadian financial technology and service firms, its best use is as a practical comparison and control review, not as a statement of Canadian regulatory obligations.
Key Resources
FINRA Cybersecurity Effective Practices (12-part cybersecurity control framework)
Cybersecurity Effective Practices PDF (downloadable nine page resource)
Small Firm Cybersecurity Checklist (small firm program checklist last reviewed February 2024)
Core Cybersecurity Threats And Controls (small firm threats and control questions)
FINRA Cybersecurity Resources (cybersecurity tools, guidance and related material)
2026 Cybersecurity And Cyber Enabled Fraud (current threats and effective practices)
Proposed Class Action Targets Equifax Access Controls (access governance and third party permissions)
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](http://www.ncfacanada.org)
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Can Canada Turn Access Into Productive Participation?
August 21, 2026 | Last Updated: Oct 7, 2026 | NCFA Story Intelligence | Competition And Market Structure, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure, Open Banking Open Finance And Data Sharing
Can Canada Turn Access Into Productive Participation?
Talent, Capital, Payments, Data And Retail Markets Are Converging Into A 2030 Growth Test
On August 21, 2026, Canada's founder drain returned to the national debate with a harder number attached to it. The Dominion List, a curated catalogue rather than a census, now tracks 517 U.S.-based companies with a Canadian-linked founder. Together they have raised roughly US$414 billion. About 88% of the founder links include education at a Canadian university, and 56% of the companies are headquartered in San Francisco.
The pace in the list also accelerated during the AI boom. Jesse Rodgers' Barn Ventures analysis counts 60 newly founded U.S. companies with Canadian-linked founders in 2023, 93 in 2024 and 87 in 2025, compared with roughly 20 to 30 a year from 2016 through 2022. The dataset is curated and recent companies may be easier to capture, so it should not be treated as a population estimate. The direction is still difficult to ignore.
Canada clearly produces ambitious builders. The strategic question is whether enough of them can find the capital, customers, infrastructure, investors and operating density needed to build more of the resulting value here. That makes founder retention part of a wider participation problem, not a standalone brain-drain story.
Canada Produces The Builders. The U.S. Captures More Of The Compounding
Canadian universities are producing founders at global scale. The Dominion List links 88% of its founder records to Canadian universities. Waterloo alone accounts for 216 founders across 180 U.S.-based companies in the current dataset, while Toronto, McGill, UBC and Queen's are also major feeders.
The value capture concentrates somewhere else. The 517 companies in the list have raised about US$414 billion. Fifty-six are valued at US$1 billion or more, 19 are public and 59 have been acquired. San Francisco alone hosts 287 of them.
Talent Is Only Productive Capacity If The System Activates It
Canada's problem is not producing ambitious people. It is converting more of that talent into companies, jobs, ownership and follow-on investment that compound inside the Canadian economy.
U.S. founder programs start earlier and remove more friction. Barn Ventures maps programs that reach students before graduation, then layer in early capital, founder communities, recruiting, immigration support and dense investor networks. The argument is that the U.S. offer is a system rather than one accelerator or one cheque.
Canada's response cannot be one more accelerator. Keeping more founders does not mean preventing mobility or copying Silicon Valley. It means giving more builders credible reasons to start, finance, hire and scale from Canada before the strongest networks and ownership structures form elsewhere.
The Participation Problem Starts Before The Financing Round
Capital matters, but so do density, access, customers, infrastructure and the speed of getting from talent to a company with traction. Founder retention makes the wider participation thesis concrete because Canada can create the input and still lose much of the compounding.
The U.S. Keeps Reopening The Participation Question
The Forum looks across the financing lifecycle. NCFA's review of the SEC Small Business Forum shows why the process is useful for Canada. The 2026 Forum program again moved from early-stage financing to growth capital and smaller public markets.
The same frictions keep returning in new forms. Finders, investor eligibility, offering limits, fund structures, secondary liquidity and small-public-company economics remain active issues because one reform can solve one bottleneck while exposing another.
The Market Is Never Finished 45 years of feedback
The transferable lesson is not a U.S. securities rule. It is the habit of bringing market participants back into the process and testing whether a framework is producing the market it was intended to create.
Canada already has detailed market evidence. CVCA tracks venture and private equity, while NACO tracks angel investing. Regulators and departments publish market studies, consultations and program data. Canada does not lack information about every part of the financing system.
Canada is also actively intervening. The federal government is preparing another C$1 billion venture and growth capital program. The Competition Bureau is studying SME financing. Payments, data access and retail private markets are also being redesigned.
The Canadian Opportunity Is To Connect Policy With Market Function
Canada already has consultations, programs and market data. The harder test is whether each reform produces enough real participation to change who can compete, invest and scale.
Canada Is Opening More Than Capital Markets
Institutional venture capital is getting a larger engine. The Venture and Growth Capital Catalyst Initiative is designed to attract more private and institutional capital into Canadian venture funds, strengthen fund managers and support high-growth companies from pre-seed through growth.
SME financing is being tested against a broader business population. NCFA's SME financing competition review examines lender entry, expansion, switching friction and the market position of alternative finance providers. The Competition Bureau market study is the primary verification source.
More Capital Does Not Answer Who Can Participate
Growth VCCI can deepen capital for companies that fit venture mandates. It does not automatically finance every viable manufacturer, service company or local employer whose growth profile, asset base or financing need sits outside institutional venture economics.
Financial data is moving toward regulated access. NCFA's Canada Open Banking Rules intelligence tracks accreditation, liability, data scope, security and technical standards as consumer-driven banking moves toward operation. Finance Canada's proposed regulations provide the primary policy source.
Core payment infrastructure is opening to a wider membership base. PSPs and more credit unions can join Payments Canada, while the Real-Time Rail rules and access are moving toward the planned Q4 2026 launch. Payments Canada remains the primary launch and system source. Wider eligibility gives PSPs and credit unions a clearer route into core payment infrastructure.
The Door Opens, Then Economics Decide Who Walks Through
Formal access changes who is allowed to participate. Competition changes only when entrants can absorb compliance, technology, integration and operating costs and still build products customers want.
Fintechs can gain more control over the customer experience. More direct access to data, payments and settlement can reduce dependence on incumbent-controlled infrastructure and give challengers more control over pricing, product design and service delivery.
Smaller financial institutions can compete through shared capabilities. Credit unions and regional firms may not need to build every payments, AI, compliance, data or digital-asset capability internally if specialized providers can deliver those functions at workable scale.
Participation Can Change The Cost Of Competing
The payoff is not a longer list of fintech entrants. It is more providers controlling enough of their infrastructure and economics to put sustained pressure on incumbents.
Retail Investors Are Entering Private Markets Through Two Doors
Managed access gives households professional selection. Ontario's long-term asset fund work could give retail investors diversified exposure to venture capital, private equity, private debt, infrastructure and other long-duration assets through professionally managed funds. The OSC LaunchPad notice verifies the project and its retail-access objective.
Direct access gives households the company decision. Equity crowdfunding lets an investor choose an individual company. It can connect businesses with customers, employees and supporters, but it also concentrates risk and usually offers little liquidity.
Private-Market Access Is Splitting Into Two Models
Managed access can broaden exposure to private-market returns. Direct access can broaden the number of people deciding which companies receive their money. Both can widen participation, but they create different markets.
Canada is building the managed channel for wider retail use. Managed structures can bring diversification, diligence, portfolio construction and product-level controls around valuation and liquidity. They can also preserve professional gatekeeping over where retail capital is deployed.
Canada's direct channel remains comparatively constrained. NI 45-110 allows a Canadian issuer to raise up to C$1.5 million in 12 months. Ordinary investors are generally limited to C$2,500 per offering, or C$10,000 when a registered dealer determines suitability.
Risk Appetite Is Also A Wealth Participation Question
If more company value is created while businesses remain private, wider retail access affects more than issuer financing. It influences which households can accept productive risk and participate earlier in private-market returns.
Canadian direct demand can reach the existing ceiling. Blossom, Edison Motors and Gander have used community capital alongside accredited, offering memorandum or other financing. Their raises show direct retail capital can complement professional capital rather than replace it.
International peers provide more room for direct participation. Australia permits eligible issuers to raise A$5 million in 12 months and caps retail investment at A$10,000 per company annually. U.S. Regulation Crowdfunding allows eligible issuers to raise up to US$5 million.
Legal Access Can Still Produce A Thin Market
Canada's smaller market does not prove regulation caused weak activity. Issuer quality, investor demand, distribution, awareness, liquidity and platform execution also matter. It does show why market-opening rules should eventually be judged by whether enough issuers, investors and intermediaries can participate economically.
By 2030, Participation Should Show Up In The Market
One future produces more viable participants. New payment participants build useful services. Open-banking firms turn permissioned data into products customers adopt. Smaller institutions buy modern capabilities instead of rebuilding them. More businesses find financing that fits their stage and economics.
The other future opens rules without changing market power very much. Accreditation, integration, compliance, distribution and technology remain expensive enough that the largest institutions and professional managers capture most new activity. Formal access widens while competitive intensity changes only at the margin.
By 2030, The Difference Will Be Visible In Who Built Scale
The evidence will be practical. Entrants that survive. Products customers use. Capital reaching different kinds of companies. Investors using managed and direct routes. Smaller institutions offering capabilities once reserved for much larger competitors.
Better participation can improve the inputs to productivity. More financing choices, faster settlement, stronger data access and better financial tools can give businesses more capacity to invest, automate, hire, commercialize and serve customers.
Stronger companies can create the next round of participation. Businesses that build revenue, productivity and international reach create more investable opportunities. When more founders build and exit from Canada, employees, angel investors and repeat entrepreneurs can recycle capital, experience and networks into the next generation.
That recycling question is now moving into tax policy. The Bet on Canada campaign, launched in October 2026 by Canadian innovation, venture and professional groups, is calling for stronger incentives to reinvest gains from successful Canadian companies into the next generation of domestic businesses, including broader capital gains rollover treatment.
Productive Participation Could Become Self-Reinforcing
More viable participants can increase competition. Better competition can improve products, distribution and capital allocation. Better tools and financing can support more investment. Stronger companies can create more opportunities for households and institutions to participate again.
The U.S. process expects the friction to change. Market participants return because new rules, market conditions and business models keep changing the problem. A recommendation can be implemented and still leave a new bottleneck elsewhere.
Canada will need the same feedback discipline across more than capital. As payments, data, private markets and financing become more open, policymakers will need to know who entered, who could not, which businesses became sustainable and where access failed to generate enough economic activity.
The Next Policy Question Comes After Access
Canada has spent years opening doors. The next phase is finding out which openings create viable markets. That means judging regulation and public programs by the participation, competition and productive activity they generate while preserving the protections that made wider access possible.
Participation is not a complete explanation for Canada's productivity problem. Management capability, commercialization, industrial structure, R&D, domestic demand, risk appetite and global scale all matter. The value of the thesis is that Canada is now opening enough capital, data, payments and investor channels at the same time to test whether participation becomes a measurable growth mechanism.
Talking Point
Canada already produces globally competitive talent and holds deep pools of capital, technology and institutional capacity. The opportunity between now and 2030 is to connect more of those assets before founders, ownership and future value compound somewhere else. If today's reforms create viable participation rather than permission alone, Canada could end the decade with more competitors, more investable companies and more ways for households and institutions to share in productive growth.
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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How Canadians Pay Online in 2026: Interac, Digital Wallets and Open Banking
Aug 19, 2026
Canada enters the second half of 2026 with two pieces of payment infrastructure arriving at once. The Real-Time Rail is scheduled to go live in the fourth quarter, and the regulations underpinning consumer-driven banking were published in the Canada Gazette in June. Both have been discussed for the better part of a decade. Neither has yet changed how a Canadian consumer actually pays for something online.
That gap between framework and behaviour matters more than either announcement. The most recent full picture of Canadian payment behaviour comes from Payments Canada's Canadian Payment Methods and Trends report, published in October 2025 and covering 2024, which counted 22.5 billion retail payment transactions worth $12.2 trillion. The market grew three per cent in both volume and value year over year. Over five years, volume rose nine per cent and value 22 per cent.
Some of the sharpest movement in that behaviour is happening in sectors where account-to-account transfer is already the preferred rail, regulated online gambling among them. Swiper online casino Canada, a casino and sportsbook brand launched into the Canadian market in 2025 and available across the country outside Ontario, is a useful illustration: it runs thousands of casino, live dealer and sports betting titles from providers such as NetEnt, Microgaming and Evolution, and lists Interac e-Transfer alongside Visa and Mastercard for deposits and withdrawals, with limits from $25 to $10,000 and e-Transfer identified as the fastest payout route for Canadian players. It is referenced here as a working example of how e-Transfer is being used commercially, which is the shift the rest of this article examines.
The card baseline has not moved much
Cards remain the substrate. Credit cards accounted for 33 per cent of total payment volume in 2024 and debit for 30 per cent, so the two together carried 63 per cent of everything. Electronic funds transfer took 14 per cent and cash 11 per cent.
Credit card volume reached 7.5 billion transactions, a six per cent increase, against 112 million cards in circulation, up five per cent. Digital payments made up 86 per cent of total volume and contactless 58 per cent of transactions.
Those proportions have held steady long enough that outright displacement of cards looks like the wrong thing to watch for. The narrower question tells you more. Which transaction types move first, and what makes them move, is already visible in a handful of categories.
What Interac e-Transfer became
The clearest answer so far is e-Transfer. It stopped being a person-to-person convenience some time ago. Interac's own figures for its 2025 fiscal year record 1.6 billion e-Transfer transactions, with a single-month record of 149 million in October 2025. Business Request Money passed 160 million transactions, an 81 per cent year-over-year increase, which is the number that matters most for commercial adoption.
Interac Debit ran to seven billion transactions in the same period, including 1.8 billion mobile transactions and an all-time monthly high of 638 million in August 2025.
Payments Canada data puts the longer arc in context. Online transfers grew 175 per cent in volume and 219 per cent in value across five years, though the growth rate itself has been declining, which points to a service approaching maturity rather than one still finding its market.
The Real-Time Rail lands in Q4
Payments Canada confirmed that the RTR By-law and RTR Rules received all necessary approvals and come into force on 24 August 2026, with the system itself scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter. The by-law has been published in the Canada Gazette, Part II.
The RTR carries ISO 20022 messaging and settles irrevocably, around the clock. The practical consequence is that data can travel with the payment, which is what makes richer reconciliation and request-to-pay flows possible. Irrevocability also shifts the risk model. Cards provide a chargeback mechanism and the RTR does not, so fraud controls have to sit in front of the payment rather than behind it, and that changes what a payment service provider has to build before it can offer the rail to anyone.
Membership has broadened ahead of launch, with Wise, KOHO, Float, Paramount Commerce and Brim Financial joining as payment service provider members.
Consumer-driven banking has a framework and no date
The Consumer-Driven Banking Regulations were published in the Canada Gazette, Part I on 27 June 2026. Responsibility for implementation and oversight is delegated to the Bank of Canada, which is a change from the earlier position placing the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada in that role.
Scope covers deposit accounts, payment products, investment accounts and lending accounts, across consumer profile data, account data and product data. Derived data, meaning enhanced information carrying additional commercial value, is excluded. Participation runs in three tiers: large banks above a retail volume threshold are mandated, other federally regulated entities may opt in, and payment service providers, fintechs and provincially regulated institutions may participate through accreditation.
Phase one is limited to read access. Write access, meaning payment initiation and account switching, is anticipated later.
The published regulations do not state an implementation date, which matters for anyone planning against this. Commentary through 2026 has variously placed phase one in early 2026 and pushed it later, and the Bank of Canada has not committed publicly to a launch. It is also worth being clear that read access without write access produces better data rather than a new payment method. The payment capability arrives with phase two, and phase two depends on the RTR being live and broadly reachable.
Where account-to-account demand is already concentrated
Ahead of any of that, demand for account-to-account payment is not evenly spread. It concentrates in categories where card acceptance is restricted, where chargeback exposure is high, or where payout speed is itself a competitive feature.
Regulated online gambling is the clearest Canadian example of all three at once. In its third year of operation, iGaming Ontario reported total wagers of $82.7 billion and gaming revenue of $3.2 billion for the year to 31 March 2025, increases of 31 and 32 per cent respectively, with casino products accounting for $69.6 billion of the wagering. Operators in the segment lean heavily on e-Transfer in both directions, using it for both deposits and withdrawals and typically presenting it as the fastest payout option for Canadian players.
That pattern is worth watching because it is where the RTR's value proposition will be tested first. Sectors already paying an operational premium for speed are the ones with a reason to move early, and their volumes are large enough to matter.
What changes for merchants
For most Canadian merchants the honest near-term answer is: not much, yet. The RTR launches in phases, banks are required to receive but not initially to send, and customer-facing services are optional in the early stages. Until sending capability is widespread, most consumers will never encounter it.
See: Canada Real-Time Rail Rules And Access Intelligence Guide
The medium-term shift is in cost structure rather than user experience. Account-to-account payment removes interchange. It also removes the economics that fund card rewards programs, and Canadian attachment to those programs is not trivial, with 112 million cards in circulation representing a substantial installed base of habit. Displacement is likelier to begin in bill payment, high-value purchases and payouts than in everyday retail.
The infrastructure question in Canada has largely been answered. What remains is distribution, and that is a slower problem.
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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AWS AgentCore Payments Brings Spending Controls To AI Agents
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August 18, 2026 | NCFA Insight | Artificial Intelligence And Data, Payments Infrastructure And Money Movement, Digital Assets
Wallet Delegation, Spending Limits And Machine Payments
On August 18, 2026, Amazon Web Services made AgentCore Payments generally available, taking the capability from its May preview into production. AI agents can now encounter paid APIs, services accessed through Model Context Protocol (MCP), or other digital resources during a workflow and initiate payment through infrastructure that connects spending controls with external wallets.
AWS can enforce how much an agent is allowed to spend and for how long, manage access to wallet providers and coordinate the payment from inside the same infrastructure used to run the agent. Coinbase or Stripe's Privy provides the wallet, while external providers and blockchain networks handle signing, verification and settlement.
AWS isn't taking custody of customer money. It is taking a position earlier in the transaction, where software determines whether it has permission to buy something and which payment connection to use. That puts payment authority closer to the AI execution layer.
GA Adds More Ways For Agents To Pay During A Task
AgentCore Payments already supported Coinbase and Privy wallets, spending controls and x402 payments during preview. General availability adds the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), easier Coinbase wallet setup, improved discovery of paid x402 services and an x402 pricing option called upto.
The upto model is designed for services whose final cost isn't known before use. An agent can approve a maximum amount, while the provider charges for what was actually consumed. AWS points to model inference, compute and other usage-based APIs where a flat price per request may not reflect the real cost.
That fits how autonomous software may buy digital services. Instead of establishing a subscription with every provider in advance, an agent can encounter a paid resource during a task, check whether the price fits its delegated budget, pay for it and continue.
See: Should Fintechs Design For People Or AI Agents?
MPP adds another payment protocol. Developed by Stripe and Tempo, it lets software exchange payment requirements during an online transaction and can support different payment models, including microtransactions and recurring payments.
x402 takes a somewhat different approach. It lets an online service respond to an agent's request by saying payment is required before the resource is released. The agent can then authorize the payment through its connected wallet and retry the request.
Stripe says MPP can support stablecoins as well as conventional payment methods, but AgentCore Payments currently documents an embedded crypto wallet as its supported payment instrument.
AWS Controls The Spending Rules, Not The Money
The architecture adds useful boundaries around the word autonomous. A user or business first provides the wallet and grants authority. AWS then applies rules around how the agent can use that authority during a payment session. NCFA's Financial Innovation Map tracks this convergence of AI agents, financial permissions and programmable infrastructure.
Those controls can include an expiry and a maximum amount the agent is permitted to spend. Before a transaction proceeds, AgentCore checks whether the request fits within that budget. A payment that exceeds the limit is rejected at the infrastructure level rather than left to the agent's judgement.
AWS also keeps the wallet-provider credentials away from the agent itself. Coinbase or Privy provides the wallet infrastructure, while AWS uses controlled access to request operations such as signing a transaction.
The result is delegated spending rather than independent control of money. The person or business sets the authority, AWS enforces part of the operating boundary and the connected wallet provider controls the financial instrument.
AWS also records payment activity through its monitoring tools, giving developers logs and transaction information they can use to review what agents attempted and what payments succeeded. That adds an audit layer around activity that would otherwise be difficult to supervise once agents begin buying resources during longer workflows.
This is where AWS gains a potentially valuable position. It doesn't need to become a bank or payment processor to influence whether an agent-side transaction can proceed.
Coinbase And Privy Supply The Wallet Layer
Coinbase is one supported provider, not an exclusive requirement. Its developer infrastructure provides embedded wallets and supports x402 payments, while Coinbase's Bazaar service helps agents discover online services that accept the protocol.
Coinbase documents payments in the USDC stablecoin on Base and Solana for its AgentCore implementation. That makes digital assets a substantive part of the current product architecture rather than a side effect of Coinbase's involvement. It also connects directly to NCFA's Programmable Stablecoin Payments opportunity brief, which examines programmable money movement and payment infrastructure.
Privy provides another embedded-wallet option. The company is now part of Stripe, but its role in AgentCore is still wallet infrastructure rather than ordinary card processing through Stripe's full payments stack.
AgentCore Payments doesn't require every payment protocol to use cryptocurrency, and MPP itself can support other payment methods. But AWS's currently documented AgentCore payment instrument is still a crypto wallet.
Payment companies therefore remain important underneath the agent platform. They provide the wallet, credentials and financial infrastructure needed to execute transactions, while AWS controls more of the environment where an agent decides when to call them.
This isn't the only infrastructure model emerging. Circle's USDC infrastructure for AI agents combines policy-controlled wallets, service discovery and programmable payments under predefined guardrails.
Travala Shows How Delegated Agent Payments Work
Travala provides a useful production example because its implementation shows where the customer's authority remains. Its current Travel MCP lets an AI agent search and book hotels, with payment settled in the USDC stablecoin on Base from a Coinbase wallet connected through AgentCore.
The customer still has to authorize the spending relationship. Travala says the permission is revocable and time-limited, the company never receives the private key and the customer must explicitly confirm the hotel purchase before payment is made.
Once that permission is in place, the agent can complete the payment within the delegated limits and continue the booking workflow. That is more precise than saying an AI agent independently controls money.
AWS also names Anchor Browser, SpreadX's Incarna, Elsa AI and Heurist AI among customers or integrations using AgentCore Payments. AWS does not provide transaction volumes for those implementations, so there isn't yet enough evidence to describe agent-led payments as broadly adopted at scale.
The Travala example is still important. It shows a live consumer transaction where conversational software can search, obtain approval and complete payment without sending the customer into a separate checkout flow.
Payment Distribution Could Move Into The AI Stack
Traditional electronic payments divide responsibility among merchants, gateways, processors, acquirers, networks, issuers and customer interfaces. Agent commerce adds another decision point before many of those functions because software has to decide whether a paid service is useful, whether the price is acceptable and whether the purchase falls within the user's authority.
AWS now controls part of that decision environment. It doesn't set the merchant's price, supply the customer's money or settle the transaction. It can, however, determine whether the agent's payment request fits its permitted spending session and coordinate access to the wallet needed to proceed.
That creates a new distribution question for payment companies. A wallet provider may still own the financial relationship underneath the transaction, while the cloud or AI platform controls the environment where an agent discovers a service and decides which payment connection to use.
See: OpenAI Pulls Back From Checkout As Agentic Commerce Expands
AgentCore Payments still has important limits. AWS isn't providing general merchant acquiring, and its documentation doesn't establish native chargebacks, universal merchant controls or a standalone fraud-screening service inside AgentCore Payments. Those functions may remain with the merchant, application, wallet provider or other payment infrastructure.
Control of the agent execution environment can still become valuable payment real estate even when the platform never holds the money. If agents increasingly choose services and initiate purchases on behalf of users, the infrastructure governing those decisions becomes another point where payment providers compete for access.
AgentCore Payments Is Not Yet Available In Canada
AgentCore Payments is currently available in 12 AWS regions across the United States, Europe, Singapore and Australia. AWS does not currently offer the capability from its Canadian region, even though several other AgentCore services are available there.
That creates a practical constraint for Canadian developers that want to keep this part of the stack in an AWS Canadian region. They can deploy AgentCore Payments elsewhere, but there is no Canadian region for the capability today.
The longer-term issue for Canadian fintechs and financial institutions is less about one AWS region and more about where financial authority is being placed. Agent payments combine AI governance, delegated spending, wallets and payment infrastructure inside one operating workflow.
Firms will need to decide which controls remain inside their own applications and which can be delegated to cloud, wallet and protocol providers. That becomes more important as agents gain permission to buy services during a task rather than simply recommend what a person should buy.
Talking Point
If AI and cloud platforms control the environment where agents receive spending authority and decide whether a transaction can proceed, while payment companies provide wallets and settlement underneath them, which layer will ultimately control distribution in agent-led commerce?
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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