Canada’s long-awaited real-time rail (RTR) infrastructure is ready to launch in the fourth quarter of this year, Payments Canada confirms. The deployment will enable 24/7 settlement and clearance of transactions securely, eliminating the need for manual reconciliation.
Leigh-Anne Bertrand, a spokesperson for Payments Canada, tells Treasury Today that RTR will launch in Q4 for direct-to-exchange participants. In the first quarter of next year, the next initial stage will occur for Interac e-Transfer clearing and settlement migration participants. Additional clearing and migration participants will join in Q2. By Q3, all participants in initial launch phases should be at full transaction volumes.
Strategic shift
In a report published on 4th September, consultancy EY calls Canada’s RTR “a strategic shift in how payments are funded, protected, operated and commercialised.” Users should take comfort not only from the speed but also from the automation and information that will follow the payments.
“For Canada, the question is not whether RTR will be fast. It’s whether institutions can turn real-time movement into payment capability that is safe, trusted, data-rich and commercially useful,” writes EY Canada Payments Leader, Diana Halder. “RTR’s value will depend on how institutions convert settlement, data and trust features into dependable customer-facing services.”
Halder notes that RTR “introduces design choices that will determine whether real-time payments can be funded reliably, enriched with usable data and trusted” before the money is transferred.
“A payment can move quickly and still be difficult to fund, monitor, reconcile, explain or protect,” she adds. “The stronger test is whether participants can settle reliably, manage liquidity under stress, detect fraud before value moves, communicate payment status clearly and use richer data to improve reconciliation, reporting and customer service.”
Michael Liberty, Vice President of Global Money Operations at CIBC, expects the embedded data to enable functions ranging from predictive analysis to the issuance of intraday and micro loans.
“Just building off the data side, I think, is going to drive a lot of those use cases,” Liberty said in a Payments Canada podcast. “Any type of disbursement – obviously the reconciliation behind that is going to be really, really important. I think a lot of innovations are going to come through the businesses, because they know their clients [and] where the problems are.”
In survey results released last month, Payments Canada found that 60% of Canadian businesses are prepared to adopt real-time payments. About 29% said their first priority is the guaranteed nature of the payments, while 27% prioritise real-time fraud monitoring.
“Notably, the RTR will be one of the first real-time payment systems globally to launch with centralised fraud services from day one to complement participants’ internal fraud controls,” said Jon Purther, Research Director at Payments Canada.
Maximising the utility of RTR
Stakeholders are already rolling out new tools and features to maximise the utility of RTR.
Vancouver-based bank and trust Peoples Group has announced a collaboration with Feedzai, which deploys AI in fighting financial crimes, to enhance fraud-monitoring architecture. Peoples Group “will integrate advanced risk-scoring technology into its core transaction framework to meet evolving regulatory requirements and support a trusted instant settlement environment” for Canada’s RTR.
“Trust is critical to driving adoption of Canada’s real-time rail, and embedding fraud protection at the transaction level helps all players participate in an instant payments world with greater confidence,” said David Raju, President and Chief Executive of Peoples Group. “For Canada to thrive, we need strong, innovative fraud detection built around the real-time rail.”
EY expects wide adoption of the RTR, which ultimately can set a new Canadian standard “for institutions that want to offer more than basic payment connectivity” while enabling treasurers to keep track of liquidity and see data from other departments.
“The strongest participants will use RTR readiness to modernise how payments are monitored, supported and controlled. That includes real-time dashboards, automated alerts, exception playbooks, defined response times, cross-functional incident management and clearer customer communications,” Halder writes.
“This isn’t just a technology issue,” she emphasises. “RTR will cut across payments, treasury, fraud, technology, operations, customer support, risk and third-party management. Treasury and fraud teams need timely visibility into capacity, funding triggers and risk decisions.”
