Shakepay Joins Interac e Transfer Directly

July 23, 2026 | NCFA Market Activity | Payments And Money Movement, Digital Assets, Competition And Market Structure

Shakepay Joins Interac e Transfer Directly

On July 16, 2026, Shakepay joined Interac e Transfer as a participant. Its customers could already send and receive e Transfers. The important change is behind the product.

Direct participation gives Shakepay more control over how transfers are connected, operated and improved. It can work closer to Interac instead of relying as heavily on another financial institution to provide a service that sits at the centre of its Canadian dollar experience.

Interac says Shakepay serves more than 1.5 million Canadians. Interac e Transfer processed more than 1.6 billion transactions last year.

That makes this less about adding another payment button and more about owning a larger part of the customer relationship.

Shakepay began as a simple way to buy bitcoin. It now offers Canadian dollar balances, e Transfers, card spending, bitcoin rewards and business accounts. Joining Interac directly gives those products a stronger operating base.

Shakepay Is Building Around The Canadian Dollar

Bitcoin remains the hook, but most customers still enter Shakepay through Canadian dollars.

They fund an account, buy an asset, spend from a cash balance or withdraw money to a bank. The better Shakepay handles those steps, the more useful the account becomes before and after a crypto trade.

Its bitcoin rewards strategy follows the same logic. Customers pay merchants in Canadian dollars through established card infrastructure and earn bitcoin afterwards. Merchants don’t have to accept crypto, and customers don’t have to change how they pay.

Interac participation strengthens the other side of that model. Shakepay can connect familiar money movement with bitcoin ownership inside one account.

This is where the company’s strategy becomes more interesting.

A crypto exchange earns activity when customers trade. An everyday financial account can earn attention when they get paid, send money, shop, save or manage a business. Shakepay doesn’t need bitcoin to replace Canadian payment rails. It needs bitcoin to become more useful because those rails are built into the product.

Direct participation doesn’t guarantee faster transfers, higher limits or lower fees. Interac and Shakepay haven’t announced those changes. The value will show up in what Shakepay builds next and whether customers notice a better experience.

From Payments Canada Member To Network Participant

Shakepay became the first crypto focused company to join Payments Canada in May 2025.

That was an important credential. Payments Canada membership brought Shakepay into national payment system governance and made deeper infrastructure access possible. It didn’t connect the company automatically to every rail or network.

Interac participation is a more practical step. Shakepay is now closer to an operating service its customers already use.

• Payments Canada membership gives Shakepay a place within the organization that owns and operates Canada’s core clearing and settlement systems
• Interac participation gives Shakepay a direct relationship with the network behind a major customer payment service

One opens institutional access. The other can change the product.

Shakepay qualified as a FINTRAC registered money services business and a CIRO regulated investment dealer. Its dealer membership took effect in January 2025, adding national oversight of its investment operations, capital, custody and compliance.

Regulation is becoming part of the competitive stack. It takes time and money, but it also gives fintechs access to infrastructure that was once largely reserved for banks and credit unions.

Canada’s crypto market is splitting along two strategies.

Robinhood bought WonderFi and its Bitbuy and Coinsquare platforms to enter Canada with regulated trading scale. Shakepay remains independent and is extending outward from bitcoin into payments.

One strategy consolidates trading platforms under a global owner. The other tries to turn a Canadian crypto relationship into a broader financial account.

Interac participation gives Shakepay more control, but it also leaves less room to blame an intermediary when payments fail. Fraud controls, outages, customer support and account reliability now carry more strategic weight.

NCFA Perspective

Shakepay has assembled much of an everyday financial account without becoming a bank. Customers can hold Canadian dollars, move money through Interac, spend through a prepaid card and earn bitcoin rewards. Businesses can manage cash and digital assets through the same platform.

The products fit together. Now customers need to use them. More than 1.5 million registered users gives Shakepay reach, but it doesn’t show how many customers maintain balances, route recurring income or use the account every week. Those behavioural actions are beyond account registrations because they determine deposit stability, payment volume and customer lifetime value.

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Direct Interac participation improves operating control and reduces reliance on intermediaries. It also gives Shakepay more freedom to design the account around payments, cash and bitcoin. The larger opportunity is to convert a crypto relationship into a primary financial relationship. That depends on whether customers trust Shakepay enough to leave money there and useful enough to return when they aren’t buying bitcoin.

Talking Point

Can Shakepay turn direct Interac access into a primary financial relationship, or will it remain the account Canadians use mainly when they want bitcoin?