Canada’s Real-Time Rail is live, with Wealthsimple, KOHO and other early participants helping usher in a new era of around-the-clock payments.
Payments Canada launched the national system on November 9, enabling participating institutions to exchange, clear and settle payments in real time, every day of the year. The infrastructure gives banks, credit unions and payment service providers a platform to build faster payment products for consumers and businesses.
The eight initial participants are Wealthsimple, Questbank, Peoples Trust Company, Paramount Commerce, KOHO, DoBusiness.com, Digital Commerce Bank and Bank of America.
For Wealthsimple, the launch marks another step toward enabling instant transfers between financial institutions.
“The Real-Time Rail can transform how money moves in this country, with payments that arrive in seconds instead of days,” said Michael Katchen, Wealthsimple’s co-founder and CEO.
The company is currently testing its capabilities and plans to introduce new instant-payment features in 2027. That distinction matters: the infrastructure is now operational, but customer-facing services will arrive as participants complete their own rollouts.
Wealthsimple says faster payments could improve cash flow for the 30,000 Canadian businesses it serves by reducing the time they spend waiting for funds.
Paramount Commerce is also among the first companies live on the system. The pay-by-bank provider says its merchants and partners can benefit from round-the-clock settlement, higher transaction limits and proactive fraud mitigation.
DCBank CEO Jeff Smith highlighted the opportunity for the fintechs and corporate clients his bank supports.
“With the RTR, those companies can now give their customers faster, more robust ways to move money, right from launch,” said Smith.
Security is a central part of the new infrastructure. Mandatory safeguards include confirmation of payee for consumer accounts, transaction risk scoring, a repository of fraud indicators and a fraud reporting platform, alongside participants’ existing controls.
Interac designed and built the RTR Exchange and serves as the system’s technical operator and centralized fraud services provider.
“Real-time payments require fraud safeguards that act with the same speed as the transactions themselves,” said Mark Hines, Interac’s head of fraud product.
Payments Canada is introducing participants and transaction volumes in stages. Its target timeline calls for initial Interac e-Transfer clearing and settlement migration in the first quarter of 2027, additional migration participants in the second quarter, and full transaction volumes for participants in the initial launch phases in the third quarter.
As more institutions join, Payments Canada expects the rail to become available to more than nine in 10 Canadians within its first year.
The next phase will centre on how financial institutions and fintech companies translate that infrastructure into everyday services—giving consumers faster access to money and businesses greater control over when payments arrive.
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