For years, Canada has been considered behind when it comes to banking innovation when compared to its counterparts in the US, Europe, the UK, and even Australia. Specifically, Canada has been slow to create and adopt its own real-time payments rails.

Today, that finally changes for the Great White North. Payments Canada announced the launch of the Real-Time Rail (RTR), a national payment system that enables instant payment and settlement, real-time cash-flow visibility, and data-rich messaging on existing banking and payment channels. Specifically, the RTR will enable participating members such as financial institutions, credit unions, and payment service providers, to exchange, clear, and settle payments in real time 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

One advantage of Canada’s delayed launch is that the country has had the opportunity to learn from the experiences of earlier real-time payment systems. Notably, RTR is launching with mandatory centralized fraud prevention capabilities, including confirmation of payee and transaction risk scoring, offering a coordinated approach to mitigating fraud as instant payments become more widespread.

The RTR is owned and operated by Payments Canada, a public-purpose organization that owns and operates Lynx, a high-value payment system; the Automated Clearing Settlement System, its retail batch payment system; and now the RTR. The new real-time rails were built in partnership with CGI, Deloitte Canada, IBM Canada, and Interac Corp., and leverages ISO 20022 data-rich messaging.

“The launch of Canada’s Real-Time Rail marks the beginning of a new era for payments in our country,” said Payments Canada President and CEO Susan E.

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