Insane that the US does not have a realtime payments network in 2026. FedNow exists but is supported by handful of banks which charge fees to use the feature.
> Outgoing transfers cost 0.75% of the transaction amount (minimum of $1, maximum of $30). SoFi does not charge a fee for incoming transactions.
> SoFi Plus members save 50%. They pay 0.375% of the transaction amount with a maximum of $15 (minimum remains $1).
Doesn't look like any of Canada's major banks are taking part?
> The initial cohort of active RTR system participants includes: Wealthsimple,
Questbank,
Peoples Trust Company,
Paramount Commerce,
KOHO,
DoBusiness.com™,
Digital Commerce Bank,
Bank of America,
> However, many of Canada’s major banks are expected to join in as well. Royal Bank of Canada, for example, is expected to introduce RTR in the second quarter of 2027.
Wealthsimple has 170 billion in assets under administration, while BMO, the smallest major bank, only has 310 billion. Considering WS is 100% retail, it's arguably a major financial institution at this point (though legally not a bank).
It does say "With additional participants onboarding continually in the coming months, including all major Canadian financial institutions and other members applying for access, the RTR will be available to more than nine in 10 Canadians within the first year after launch."
I couldn't find this info in the release, but I assume account information and transactions go through the Bank of Canada? That's how the closest analogy, Brazil's Pix, works.
RTR is owned and run by Payments Canada, which is a crown corp that also runs Lynx (large value transfer system) and ACSS (cheque clearing system.) PayCan itself is overseen by the Minister of Finance, but there is Bank of Canada oversight (risk and prudential) of the key designated systems RTR, Lynx, ACSS under the Payment Clearing and Settlements Act (PCSA)
If you look at their "about us" section, they just say they are "a corporation". https://www.payments.ca/about/who-we-are Although they were created by a law (Canada Payments Act) and have a public mandate:
Payments Canada has formed a critical part of Canada’s financial market infrastructure for over four decades. The Canadian Payments Association was created by the Canadian Payments Association Act in 1980, now known as the Canadian Payments Act (CP Act).
This mostly is referencing ETF tranfers that are relevant to consumers - e.g. bill payments and employer pay deposits that currently take several days.
Canada's Interac is anagolous to US' Zelle payment network (which is owned by the largest US commercial banks), while RTR is the US FedNow equivalent ("true" instant payment and settlement with broader use case support, operated as a utility by the US Federal Reserve).
(it should be expected that newer, utility ran instant payment systems cannibalize existing, more expensive, lower speed payment rails; going fast and being cheap as a utility is the innovation)
My credit unions now offer ach, same day ach, and instant transfers between them.
Same day ach launched with a user fee, so they usually prompt to confirm and offer to send it via normal ach instead, which I find amusing?
I also see instant transfer support at some other places I bank. I can't say if bill payment happens instantly or not, my finances don't run close to the edge, and I don't need to know exactly when a bill pay (which I generally schedule) is taken out and when it's applied; as long as both happen, I'm good.
~$800B/year in annual volume run rate, as of this comment. You can move up to $10M per value message for less than 5 cents, with a max 20 second time to completion SLA.
(i am contributing subject matter expertise to policymakers to make offering FedNow rails to financial services customers a requirement of having a banking license, so I'm a bit biased; this is the only way we'll get off of closed payment rails like Zelle, slow open rails like ACH, or expensive faster legacy credit card rails)
> Are bill payments and bank to bank transfers now happening instantaneously?
Walmart is currently rolling it out. I expect others to start to as you see them surcharge credit card payments (US mobile phone providers, internet providers, etc). It's trivial to build into an app experience, with or without a partner like Plaid (for example).
> “It surprised me,” Henry said of adoption of Walmart’s first iteration of pay-by-bank, which is available online but hasn’t been marketed to customers. “It’s certainly surpassed our expectations of the amount of customers that have registered and actually use the payment type.”
> Walmart’s upgraded pay-by-bank offering will be rolled out in 2025. The transactions will occur over bank technology provider Fiserv’s NOW Network, which integrates with The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow. Until now, large retailers hesitated to launch real time payment options because many banks were not connected to an instant settlement system, meaning their customers would not be able to use the product. NOW Network aims to connect to as many banks as possible to reach 100% of deposit accounts by combining its own network with RTP and FedNow.
Has this lead to any user-visible changes? Like, can you pay your bills on the due date now instead of a couple of business days earlier, not having to worry about it arriving on time?
The most visible change I've seen is that I can move funds instantly between my credit union (which I maintain solely for Zelle access at this time in my financial system) and Wise, for free, others would have to chime in for more pireps/ground truth on this which apps are getting this value in front of users.
I have. It is indeed nice. I haven't interacted with American bill payment infrastructure though during my visits. I read Bank of America website though, and it recommends sending bill payments 5 business days before the due date. Are they incorrect?
> How long does it take for an online payment to reach a biller?
> We recommend scheduling your payments to be made at least 5 business days prior to the actual payment due date on the bill. Scheduling your payments sufficiently in advance of the due date allows enough time for the biller to receive the payment and credit it to your account.
Checking account "Bill Pay" features are a fusion of multiple ideas that you access through a single interface.
Adding a biller to it involves typing in the biller name, providing the account number (e.g. your credit card number) and the ZIP where your bills say to mail a check.
Big billers (like say, Chase credit cards) register with the other big banks and the handful of companies who provide white-labeled platforms for all the small banks and credit unions so that when you input one of their accounts this way, it'll match it up and turn into an electronic transfer which tends to show up pretty quickly (though I assume it does still take a couple of days to fully clear, you'll usually "get credit for it" the day of the payment).
But you can also just add literally any person or company name and address. Say, Bob Smith, 123 Example Street, City, ST 12345 and they'll just mail Bob a check on your behalf. So, those will always require days of time because they have to print and mail a physical check in those cases.
So, the generic advice has to assume it's not matched to an electronic biller profile.
In the case of most banks I've used, they hide this implementation detail slightly -- they just always have you pick the date the payment 'will be received' - and when it's not an electronic biller, you just can't pick a date that's too close.
That's pretty general advice, and probably the safe choice, but anecdotally all of my bill pay ACH transactions these days are executed on the due date. The only exception is if the due date is a weekend, in which case it executes on the preceding business day. It takes usually one day, maximum two before it actually shows up as a withdrawal in the source account, but my payees all recognize the credit on the day of execution.
That's the worst-case-scenario guidance. Bank of America will print and mail a check if it can't find an electronic method. I have a client who sends me his monthly payment this way.
If you're sending to a known entity like the electric company or a credit card, it's immediate.
As you, yourself noted, "I haven't interacted with American bill payment infrastructure."
Perhaps reserve your comments for things you know about.
Draw your attention to YoY upward volume trajectory in my first citation in the comment you replied to. It is still "warming up." TAM is all existing check, ACH, Zelle, and credit card volume. Takes time for folks to get the warm fuzzies and migrate to new systems.
The faster merchants offer instant payments for making payments for free and surcharge credit card rails for payments (to cover the exorbitant cost), the faster volume moves over (imho).
What are the provisions for privacy - preventing my every financial transaction, and thus everything I do involving money, from being centrally tracked, and shared with private institutions?
And what about for preventing government from cutting people off from the financial system (without a court order)? Edit: The US government already commonly does it with non-citizens in the context of other financial systems.
At least, how does that work with FedNow if not Canada's RTR?
That is a function of the legal framework and government regulations of each country an instant payment system operates in. I don't have those specifics per country.
The government can cut you off as easily as Binance asking other platforms to block transactions when called upon, for example. If you don't want to be blocked, use cash or other bearer instruments. Every other traditional finance or crypto ecosystem has a throat to choke. Show me the financial services consumer persona and use cases and I'll walk through the attack path to cut their access to the financial system, as someone who has contributed to building financial infrastructure both in traditional finance, capital markets, and crypto rails for traditional folks.
> That is a function of the legal framework and government regulations of each country
I want to add that it can also be built in on a technical level. Some cryptocurrency already does it (I'm not advocating unregulated monetary systems or blockchain technology, I'm just saying it's possible and already done). For example, transactions could be anonymized, with PKI-type keys available only with a court order.
It can be built, it won't be built. There is no material demand or incentive to require building it. Crypto primitives, in this context, are just ceremony on top of legal systems. "You are trying to solve a people and politics problem with technology."
Not so hot on the name, initially thought it was some kind of train system payment thing. But that just lends to the coverage of this out in random mainstream media confusing consumers - not really a consumer thing but an infrastructure thing on the backend for banks/institutions. On the consumer side many will immediately think of Interac eTransfers, which this has little to do with as far as consumer experience, but it will also use this on the backend for things. Carry on.
Yeah, why on earth would they shove "Rail" into that name? I'm sure it makes sense internally, but as external name it doesn't make much sense. None of the people are even using the rail/train analogies that are right there, then what's the point even?!
> "Payment rail" is a very long established term og art.
Yes, by all means, use the existing terms internally, but when you launch things, remember you work in somewhat of a bubble, and figure out names that make sense to people. 99% of the people aren't gonna know about "payment rails", and when they hear "rails", they either think about trains, or they're a programmer and starts thinking about Ruby. And then of course there is a third group of people, like the ones that say "Payment rail is actually an established term".
> > "Payment rail" is a very long established term og art.
> Yes, by all means, use the existing terms internally, but when you launch things, remember you work in somewhat of a bubble, and figure out names that make sense to people.
This is to be used by people in the same bubble, and it does make sense, it's about as descriptive as it could be.
These payment systems need network effects, otherwise they just won't matter. Another private provider won't generate these effects. Just look at the list of participants, they're small players in Canada's marketplace. They won't generate net effects.
Besides, in times of renewed imperialism it is very crucial that a country has full control of their payment systems.
And, at last, they must offer guarantees that there will be no friction and won't be subject to enshitification.
So, what Canada needs is a system implemented, enforced and managed by the government, like Brazil's Pix and India's UPI.
Why not? Payments Canada isn't a "private provider" like Interac. This new payments system is also ISO 20022, as is Pix. Although high level, their list of features seems close to Pix:
* The real-time clearing and settlement component
* The real-time exchange component
* Third party exchanges flowing through the clearing and settlement component
Interac (eTransfer/EMT) is a great system that has already rolled out nation-wide.
Unfortunately its utility is curtailed severely if your bank doesn't trust your mobile OS (LineageOS, for me). For security purposes, my bank (RBC) triggers identity checks every time I try to send an EMT, and even after sending selfies, drivers licences, etc. — it still rejects the transfer.
So, security at the cost of all utility.
I have now resorted to transferring money between my accounts using paper cheques... like it's the 90s. If somehow they deny me cheque deposits I'll have to use an ATM and walk the money to the other bank. Given how there are now banks that don't even have branches, this could be a major problem in the future.
This Real-Time Rail system sounds promising, but that's not the link that'll kill it for everyone.
99.999% of people don’t root and install custom operating systems on consumer hardware. The bank derives immense security value by enforcing this, at the expense of your hobby installation.
I don't think this is as unusual are you're implying it might be.
I've moved funds ranging from 10k to $1m between banks in Canada much more than once, and every single time, I go to one and get a draft and drive that draft over to the destination bank. It's just easier...and its absurd.
Weird... I've never had problems using eTransfer from a browser (firefox) on my computer (linux)... which has got to be as untrustworthy a device as there is.
Used to be the case, yes. However even web-initiated EMTs trigger device confirmation. RBC seems to have made this mandatory for at least my account as of this summer.
Similar experience. No real problems. However, RBC limits the amount I can transfer to 2k per day from browser and like 5k per day from the app.
I don't send anything from TD, but if I buy anything online half the time it forces a 2FA which requires signing into the app and confirming the transaction. I imagine signing into the app might not work nicely if I was on LineageOS.
For the last several months, eTransfers initiated from my desktop browser (Firefox on Linux, same as you) have required confirmation via the RBC app on my iPhone. Definitely seems like they have multiple scales of trustworthiness for people/devices/activity. Kind of wish they'd be more transparent about what they are, but I guess that sort of transparency can easily become a vulnerability.
Unless I'm missing something I'd expect Payments Canada to have similar issues for you, since it'll still be the banks that you interact with. What changes is the settlement and messaging system between the banks.
Interesting, did you try other apps if they work on grapheneos/lineageos like koho or wealthsimple? If they do, maybe you can use it as an intermediate tool.
Bieng in a similar situation, my back up plan has been to keep a phone that is used exclusivly for personal banking and pull the sim and shut it off when not in use.
Currently I have a much fiddled with android phone and a browser that will interact with the banks web sites for banking.
I get a lot of paper cheques and convert to cash for much of my personal spending, and my hope is that the new system will facilitate timely clearance of paper cheques and actualy make them more atractive.
Just like the EU started their independent EU-wide (500 million people) payment network to become independent of the American payment monopolists. It took a fascist US admin to get the move world-wide rolling to decouple from the US and towards smaller sovereignty, but ultimately it is for the better.
If you are referring to SEPA Instant, thats not true: It started operating in 2017, though not many participants back then.
What happened last year/this year, is, thats its mandatory for banks to offer it across the EU.
Far more likely was the election of a banker as PM. He did chair both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. No doubt he knows how to get banks to do things.
So FedNow for Canada, meaning you can't use this outside of Canada at all.
Crypto blockchains like Solana, XRP, Stellar and Tempo on the other hand can be used anywhere worldwide, 24/7 and sends stablecoins like USDC in seconds with extremely low fees.
Crypto blockchains are useless for these kinds of transactions because in the real world people make mistakes, get scammed, or myriad other things that requires a transaction to be reversed.
Suppose you transfer $1000 to me on Monday via ACH (the old thing - pardon my American terminology). If I'm lucky, I can wire that money out of my account, or pull it out in cash, on Wednesday. Maybe Thursday. During that time it's definitely possible you can get the banks to reverse this transfer.
If payment is instant, what that has to mean is that the funds are actually made available to me right away. If you transfer $1000 to me on Monday, and 10 minutes later I've drained my account of funds and disappeared, how can that be "reversed"? Is one of our banks going to just eat it?
If payment is "instant, but the funds are held for several days and can't be spent or transferred" then the payment isn't instant in any meaningful way.
I don't know why anyone would trust the Liberal government with a payment system, after they went rogue and froze about 200 bank accounts without court orders during the convey protests using the emergencies act which has since been deemed illegal.
> Using powers granted under the Emergencies Act, the federal government has directed banks and other financial institutions to stop doing business with people associated with the anti-vaccine mandate convoy occupying the nation's capital.
> ... financial institutions are required to monitor and halt all transactions that funnel money to demonstrators — a measure designed to cut off funding to a well-financed protest ...
If you think they wouldnt abuse this, good luck to you.
While it may have been since deemed illegal, they found a few of those trucks to be armed to brim with munitions. It was strong reaction to try and prevent a violent insurrection on Parliament Hill, which was still fresh on many Canadians minds from Jan 6.
With or without this new payment system, they can order the banks to freeze your account or block transactions (as your example shows they were able to do before this payment system was rolled out).
> why anyone would trust the Liberal government ... after they ... froze about 200 bank accounts ... during the convey protests
Wasn't that almost 5 years ago - was it the same government? Is there reason to believe it's the Liberals and not the prime minister at the time, or that the Conservatives would be different?
You're conveniently leaving out that the PEO report found they were justified in using the emergency powers act since it was a complete failure of the local and provincial police to act, so they had to do something.
> With additional participants onboarding continually in the coming months, including all major Canadian financial institutions and other members applying for access, the RTR will be available to more than nine in 10 Canadians within the first year after launch.
> Outgoing transfers cost 0.75% of the transaction amount (minimum of $1, maximum of $30). SoFi does not charge a fee for incoming transactions.
> SoFi Plus members save 50%. They pay 0.375% of the transaction amount with a maximum of $15 (minimum remains $1).
https://www.sofi.com/banking/instant-money-transfer
> The initial cohort of active RTR system participants includes: Wealthsimple, Questbank, Peoples Trust Company, Paramount Commerce, KOHO, DoBusiness.com™, Digital Commerce Bank, Bank of America,
* https://globalnews.ca/news/12142666/real-time-rail-payments-...
If you look at their "about us" section, they just say they are "a corporation". https://www.payments.ca/about/who-we-are Although they were created by a law (Canada Payments Act) and have a public mandate:
Payments Canada has formed a critical part of Canada’s financial market infrastructure for over four decades. The Canadian Payments Association was created by the Canadian Payments Association Act in 1980, now known as the Canadian Payments Act (CP Act).
It does sound like it's for consumers as well
https://www.redcompasslabs.com/insights/why-canada-needs-ano... was something I found via a search that explains some of the nuance without writing a new post on the topic, other citations and resources are welcome.
(it should be expected that newer, utility ran instant payment systems cannibalize existing, more expensive, lower speed payment rails; going fast and being cheap as a utility is the innovation)
Same day ach launched with a user fee, so they usually prompt to confirm and offer to send it via normal ach instead, which I find amusing?
I also see instant transfer support at some other places I bank. I can't say if bill payment happens instantly or not, my finances don't run close to the edge, and I don't need to know exactly when a bill pay (which I generally schedule) is taken out and when it's applied; as long as both happen, I'm good.
https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/fed...
(i am contributing subject matter expertise to policymakers to make offering FedNow rails to financial services customers a requirement of having a banking license, so I'm a bit biased; this is the only way we'll get off of closed payment rails like Zelle, slow open rails like ACH, or expensive faster legacy credit card rails)
> Are bill payments and bank to bank transfers now happening instantaneously?
Walmart is currently rolling it out. I expect others to start to as you see them surcharge credit card payments (US mobile phone providers, internet providers, etc). It's trivial to build into an app experience, with or without a partner like Plaid (for example).
> “It surprised me,” Henry said of adoption of Walmart’s first iteration of pay-by-bank, which is available online but hasn’t been marketed to customers. “It’s certainly surpassed our expectations of the amount of customers that have registered and actually use the payment type.”
> Walmart’s upgraded pay-by-bank offering will be rolled out in 2025. The transactions will occur over bank technology provider Fiserv’s NOW Network, which integrates with The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow. Until now, large retailers hesitated to launch real time payment options because many banks were not connected to an instant settlement system, meaning their customers would not be able to use the product. NOW Network aims to connect to as many banks as possible to reach 100% of deposit accounts by combining its own network with RTP and FedNow.
Walmart Plans Instant Bank Payments, Cutting Out Card Networks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41593450 - September 2024 (3 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632105 (additional citations)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433164 (additional citations)
https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow-servic... maintains a list of banks and financial service providers currently on FedNow rails.
For at least ten years now.
You should visit America. It's nice.
> How long does it take for an online payment to reach a biller?
> We recommend scheduling your payments to be made at least 5 business days prior to the actual payment due date on the bill. Scheduling your payments sufficiently in advance of the due date allows enough time for the biller to receive the payment and credit it to your account.
https://info.bankofamerica.com/en/digital-banking/online-bil...
Adding a biller to it involves typing in the biller name, providing the account number (e.g. your credit card number) and the ZIP where your bills say to mail a check.
Big billers (like say, Chase credit cards) register with the other big banks and the handful of companies who provide white-labeled platforms for all the small banks and credit unions so that when you input one of their accounts this way, it'll match it up and turn into an electronic transfer which tends to show up pretty quickly (though I assume it does still take a couple of days to fully clear, you'll usually "get credit for it" the day of the payment).
But you can also just add literally any person or company name and address. Say, Bob Smith, 123 Example Street, City, ST 12345 and they'll just mail Bob a check on your behalf. So, those will always require days of time because they have to print and mail a physical check in those cases.
So, the generic advice has to assume it's not matched to an electronic biller profile.
In the case of most banks I've used, they hide this implementation detail slightly -- they just always have you pick the date the payment 'will be received' - and when it's not an electronic biller, you just can't pick a date that's too close.
If you're sending to a known entity like the electric company or a credit card, it's immediate.
As you, yourself noted, "I haven't interacted with American bill payment infrastructure."
Perhaps reserve your comments for things you know about.
The faster merchants offer instant payments for making payments for free and surcharge credit card rails for payments (to cover the exorbitant cost), the faster volume moves over (imho).
Brazil's Pix (https://whatispix.com/) is what desired target end state looks like imho.
Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48052371 - May 2026 (383 comments)
What are the provisions for privacy - preventing my every financial transaction, and thus everything I do involving money, from being centrally tracked, and shared with private institutions?
And what about for preventing government from cutting people off from the financial system (without a court order)? Edit: The US government already commonly does it with non-citizens in the context of other financial systems.
At least, how does that work with FedNow if not Canada's RTR?
EDIT: (clarified and reorganized)
The government can cut you off as easily as Binance asking other platforms to block transactions when called upon, for example. If you don't want to be blocked, use cash or other bearer instruments. Every other traditional finance or crypto ecosystem has a throat to choke. Show me the financial services consumer persona and use cases and I'll walk through the attack path to cut their access to the financial system, as someone who has contributed to building financial infrastructure both in traditional finance, capital markets, and crypto rails for traditional folks.
> That is a function of the legal framework and government regulations of each country
I want to add that it can also be built in on a technical level. Some cryptocurrency already does it (I'm not advocating unregulated monetary systems or blockchain technology, I'm just saying it's possible and already done). For example, transactions could be anonymized, with PKI-type keys available only with a court order.
https://xkcd.com/538/
> "Payment rail" is a very long established term og art.
Yes, by all means, use the existing terms internally, but when you launch things, remember you work in somewhat of a bubble, and figure out names that make sense to people. 99% of the people aren't gonna know about "payment rails", and when they hear "rails", they either think about trains, or they're a programmer and starts thinking about Ruby. And then of course there is a third group of people, like the ones that say "Payment rail is actually an established term".
"Payment rail" is a very long established term og art.
> Yes, by all means, use the existing terms internally, but when you launch things, remember you work in somewhat of a bubble, and figure out names that make sense to people.
This is to be used by people in the same bubble, and it does make sense, it's about as descriptive as it could be.
Meh, just another "payment option".
These payment systems need network effects, otherwise they just won't matter. Another private provider won't generate these effects. Just look at the list of participants, they're small players in Canada's marketplace. They won't generate net effects.
Besides, in times of renewed imperialism it is very crucial that a country has full control of their payment systems.
And, at last, they must offer guarantees that there will be no friction and won't be subject to enshitification.
So, what Canada needs is a system implemented, enforced and managed by the government, like Brazil's Pix and India's UPI.
* The real-time clearing and settlement component
* The real-time exchange component
* Third party exchanges flowing through the clearing and settlement component
* Centralized fraud solution
https://www.payments.ca/systems-services/payment-systems/rea...
Unfortunately its utility is curtailed severely if your bank doesn't trust your mobile OS (LineageOS, for me). For security purposes, my bank (RBC) triggers identity checks every time I try to send an EMT, and even after sending selfies, drivers licences, etc. — it still rejects the transfer.
So, security at the cost of all utility.
I have now resorted to transferring money between my accounts using paper cheques... like it's the 90s. If somehow they deny me cheque deposits I'll have to use an ATM and walk the money to the other bank. Given how there are now banks that don't even have branches, this could be a major problem in the future.
This Real-Time Rail system sounds promising, but that's not the link that'll kill it for everyone.
I've moved funds ranging from 10k to $1m between banks in Canada much more than once, and every single time, I go to one and get a draft and drive that draft over to the destination bank. It's just easier...and its absurd.
You, as a technically savvy user, could choose to use a dedicated device with an acceptable security posture for your electronic transfers.
Not really, I'm forced to use e.g. RBC because that's where my employer sends their matched retirement savings funds.
I don't send anything from TD, but if I buy anything online half the time it forces a 2FA which requires signing into the app and confirming the transaction. I imagine signing into the app might not work nicely if I was on LineageOS.
This can easily be launched from the command line via args, when needed.
Unless you let all the tracking scripts, and auth scripts load, it thinks you're evil.
The US federal government also released their own version of this in 2023 (US FedNow).
It's been an obvious next step for a while now.
Crypto blockchains like Solana, XRP, Stellar and Tempo on the other hand can be used anywhere worldwide, 24/7 and sends stablecoins like USDC in seconds with extremely low fees.
This happens all the time.
If payment is instant, what that has to mean is that the funds are actually made available to me right away. If you transfer $1000 to me on Monday, and 10 minutes later I've drained my account of funds and disappeared, how can that be "reversed"? Is one of our banks going to just eat it?
If payment is "instant, but the funds are held for several days and can't be spent or transferred" then the payment isn't instant in any meaningful way.
So you have not made a point here.
> Using powers granted under the Emergencies Act, the federal government has directed banks and other financial institutions to stop doing business with people associated with the anti-vaccine mandate convoy occupying the nation's capital.
> ... financial institutions are required to monitor and halt all transactions that funnel money to demonstrators — a measure designed to cut off funding to a well-financed protest ...
If you think they wouldnt abuse this, good luck to you.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottaw...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-fin...
https://reclaimthenet.org/court-rules-trudeau-freezing-civil...
Wasn't that almost 5 years ago - was it the same government? Is there reason to believe it's the Liberals and not the prime minister at the time, or that the Conservatives would be different?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poec-report-released-friday...
So hey, maybe we should trust the government (who does all federal payment systems) with a new federal payment system.
> With additional participants onboarding continually in the coming months, including all major Canadian financial institutions and other members applying for access, the RTR will be available to more than nine in 10 Canadians within the first year after launch.