Interac introduces instant digital payments for businesses in Canada

Canada has lagged the rest of the world in real-time payments but now that is starting to change.

This week, Canada based payment service provider, Interac Corp has announced that it is collaborating with 13 financial institutions in Canada to launch Interac e-Transfer for Business which is a solution built on Interac e-Transfer service. Under this solution, the company will enable real-time digital payments to personal and commercial bank accounts.

In the press release, Chief Commercial Officer at Interac William Keliehor noted that the launch of this service marks the ‘modernization of Canadian payments and provides a timely solution as businesses embrace financial transformation to aid their recovery and growth plans’ while further adding that this comes at a time when there is a need for ‘secure, data-rich, real-time business payments’ which arose due to Covid-19 pandemic.

Citing Interac Commercial Payments Research data in the press note, the company said that 83% of businesses call new commercial payments products as part of their post-pandemic digital transformation. The upper limit for the transaction on the network has been set to $25,000. The payment done on this network is confirmed within seconds which according to the company will reduce ‘time-consuming manual reconciliation processes through data-rich payments’ and will also give businesses ‘a higher level of efficiency and control in managing receivables and cash flow’.

This news comes at a time when earlier this year, the company announced that it has been working with Payments Canada as the exchange solution provider for Canada’s real-time payments system, the Real-Time Rail (RTR). As noted in the press note, once RTR is live, Interac e-Transfer for Business payments will utilize the new RTR exchange for processing.

Financial Institutions enabling this service are ATB Financial, BMO Financial Group, CIBC, Desjardins Group, HSBC Bank Canada, Manulife Bank of Canada, National Bank of Canada, Peoples Trust Company, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, TD Bank Group, Meridian, First West Credit Union and Vancity.