Payments Canada has still not found a new CEO to replace Tracey Black, who ran the organization for more than five years before stepping down at the end of her term earlier this week. The delay is emblematic of the problems Canada has encountered in introducing its real-time payments system, which is now years in the making.
Canada is the only G20 country without such a system in place. The Real-Time Rail (RTR), Payments Canada’s proposed real-time payment system, is years behind schedule. Payments Canada originally targeted to have the system up and running by 2019, but has pushed the deadline back several times since.
In Payments Canada’s Q4 2023 report, Black wrote: “The next update on the RTR program will be in Q1 of 2024 and I look forward to sharing more with you about this critical program.”
The latest word is that the update—not the launch—will be released in the coming weeks.
Mysterious Delays
As far back as 2020, Payments Canada said it was selecting technology partners and beginning the building process for its real-time payments platform. The target date for RTR was set for 2022.
In 2021, Payments Canada announced that Canadian interbank network Interac would be the exchange solution provider for RTR, with Mastercard providing its clearing and settlement technology.
Last June, there were “current delivery delays” that were responsible for the latest pushback on the deadline. At that time, the target date was mid-2023.
But there have also been indications suggesting that Canada’s banking industry isn’t entirely sold on the necessity for the new system. Even despite Jeremy Kronick, Director of Canada’s Centre on Financial and Monetary Policy, estimating its benefits to the nation’s economy at $3.24 billion over the first five years.
Progress on Other Fronts
Payments Canada has been active on other fronts, expanding its membership to include newer service providers and credit unions. However, this offers little comfort until the new payments system is ultimately launched.
“It’s not enough to have access to a payment system that does not yet exist,” Alex Vronces, executive director at Fintechs Canada, told the Canadian Press. “We need the payment system to exist.”