Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
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
 |  |  |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
Leave a Reply