Canada is getting closer to launching its real-time rail (RTR) payments framework, with security and resilience preparations now taking place along with ongoing acceptance testing.

In a quarterly update issued in February, Payments Canada said it recently deepened overall operational readiness and enrolled more payment service providers.

Jude Pinto, Chief Delivery Officer at Payments Canada, said the developers are simulating realistic business use cases and validating the end-to-end capabilities.

“This means testing up to peak volumes to ensure that the system can safely and effectively handle a high volume of transactions in real time,” Pinto explained.

In the written update, Payments Canada outlined the concurrent trials covering upstream, downstream and system-wide needs.

“Specifically on the testing of the RTR, in Q4 of 2025, the programme completed the system integration testing (SIT) phase in which all of the RTR’s individual components were brought together and tested as one system,” the February update explained. “This phase ensured that the system can operate according to our requirements and standards.”

Further, “we then entered the user acceptance testing (UAT) phase to validate the end-to-end business scenarios and operations. This phase, which continues into 2026, ensures that Canada’s RTR meets all business requirements and works as intended for system participants in real-world scenarios.”

Payments Canada, which is responsible for the nation’s clearing and settlement system, calls RTR a “new piece of national payment infrastructure that will allow Canadians to send and receive irrevocable, data-rich payments in real time.” It will “allow data to travel with each payment” and promises to encourage real-time liquidity management and to reduce the risk of fraud. Early use cases may include real-time rent payments, instant earned wage access and immediate “me-to-me payments,” the organisation states.

From the onset of the effort, the Treasury Management Association of Canada emphasised the need for a faster and cheaper alternative to international SWIFT wire transfers, with a desire for embedded invoice details and more efficient settlement and reconciliation. Canada’s central bank leadership is eager to enable a RTR that promises instant clearing with greater competition among payment providers.

In a December speech to a Montreal chamber of commerce audience, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem clarified the goals and outlined the possibilities.

RTR “will allow payments to clear and settle instantly, 24/7, 365 days a year – making payments here much more efficient,” Macklem explained in that speech. “In time it will also allow Canada to link our system to those in other countries so that money can move across borders more quickly.”

Last year, Payments Canada drafted guides and developed training modules in preparation for the RTR rollout. Now there is a keener focus on security functions and overall utility.

“While 2025 was a year of successes, there is still much work to do in delivering real-time payments to Canadian businesses and consumers,” the recent update stated. “In Q1 of 2026, we are focused on testing, onboarding and operational readiness.”

The next stage includes stress tests, anti-fraud scenarios and other precautions needed to give stakeholders confidence that a 24/7 real-time payments system is safe.

“In parallel to our ongoing UAT phase, we are entering performance, security and resilience testing phases, which are designed to push the limits of the entire RTR payment system in its target environments,” Payments Canada promises.

“Another key focus for this quarter is preparing to operate Canada’s RTR once live,” the update added. “We are expanding our always-on environment to manage real-time payments with centralised fraud capabilities 24 hours a day, every day of the year. This collaborative work is underway with the support and expertise of our delivery partners, operating partners and our members.”

The latest update also mentions that Wise, Float, Paramount Commerce, KOHO and Brim Financial have enrolled as payment-service-provider members.