Last week, Budget 2026 revealed new information about some of the most important files for Canada’s FinTech ecosystem: the implementation of Real-Time Rail, an instant payment infrastructure that officially launched Monday, and the ongoing progress toward an open banking system that is intended to give consumers more control over their data sharing (though the government did not provide an updated timeline).
“You need the participation of the Big Six for it to be worthwhile.”
The budget also introduced a competition objective for the financial industry’s regulator, delivering on longtime asks from industry association Fintechs Canada. The group represents FinTech companies such as Borrowell, Neo Financial, Wealthsimple, and Koho.
To unpack industry reactions to the federal budget, BetaKit sat down with Adriana Vega, the executive director of Fintechs Canada, to discuss what successful execution of Real-Time Rail, open banking, and increased financial competition could look like.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was the FinTech industry’s broad reaction to Budget 2026?
I think it’s good momentum, good continuity from Budget 2025. I think you see that momentum, especially under the banner of competition.
That dual mandate for competition is something we have been asking for, so it’s very encouraging to see.
The budget also announced that Real-Time Rail, the long-awaited instant payments system, would launch its first phase this past Monday. That phase is now live. What was your reaction to that news?
That was great to see in the budget. It’s so encouraging; it was years in the making; it’s something that our sector and our association were very open about wanting to be expedited and happen quickly.
We’ve worked fairly closely with Payments Canada. I think one of the things that is especially encouraging for us is to see more and more FinTechs coming into the tent of Payments Canada, so they can start contributing more to the governance of the organization.
Is the job done? No, because it’s still coming in waves. Payments Canada has always been fairly transparent, and we understand that this is going to be an implementation that comes in waves. It’s a massive-scale project, but we’re quite reassured by the messaging that came out of Payments Canada on Monday. They said something like nine out of 10 accounts will be in some way touched by the rail within a year, so that signals to me the plan is in place for this rollout to have broad participation.
What would a successful RTR look like?
Success looks like broad adoption, broad participation. There’s a significant amount of payment volume that operates on the rail that really kind of incentivizes the kind of dynamism that FinTechs want to see. That cost-benefit equation makes it really worth their while to design innovative solutions and build them on the rails.
None of Canada’s Big Six banks are participants yet, as BetaKit had previously reported. Do they need to be on board for it to be a success?
A lot of the volume does reside within Big Six bank accounts. So yes, we want to make sure that everybody participates. I don’t see a scenario now where it breaks and then you have some participating and some not.
You need the participation of the Big Six for it to be worthwhile. We have to get to critical mass, where all this volume is here. There are real incentives for everybody to do something with it.
There is lots of public confusion about how RTR works and why it’s different from Interac e-Transfer. How are you thinking about that disconnect?
When I talk about Real-Time Rail and instant payments, folks will say, “Well, but I can already send my friends $20, right? We already have Interac.” But RTR is really infrastructure. I don’t expect a situation where a consumer says, “Oh, they’re doing my transfer on the rail versus this one doing it by a different rail.” Right now, people don’t look at the infrastructure side of the equation; hey want a product that’s reliable, that is bespoke, that is safe, that does what it’s intended to do.
I think the most visible advantages perhaps lie more in the small business segment. That’s a segment that is super challenged with delayed payments due to batch settlement.
Another long-delayed system that FinTechs have been advocating for is open banking. There was not much about it in the budget outside of a new pledge to expand data portability beyond the banking sector. What was your reaction to that?
As I mentioned, we’re very happy with the budget, and everybody is very supportive. If there’s one thing that people go, “what’s going on there?” That’s open banking, because it looks like it’s probably not going to roll out this year. Just looking at the calendar, there’s a regulatory path, and that has to continue, but my read is that we would like to be further ahead in implementation of the framework. I think it would have been so welcome to know that they’re pushing forward with write access.
For the everyday Canadian, what does write access mean in the context of open banking?
If you think about it, we already have open banking, right? You can direct FinTechs to read your financial statements on your behalf. That is done through screen scraping, which gives them read access. That’s where we’re at in our journey of regulating open banking. In many ways, the open banking regulations that are going to be rolled out are to meet the market where it’s at and standardize it.
Write access is sort of like the other side of the coin. You don’t just get to see it; you get to act on my permission based on all these security standards.
I suspect in the first half of next year you might start seeing some consultations around write access, potentially, because I think the ambition is to have write access legislation sometime next year.
The Logic reported that the feds are held up on selecting a technical standards body for the system because the frontrunner, Financial Data Exchange (FDX), is a US-based organization. What are your members’ thoughts on how the feds should move forward?
Most of the industry already uses one standard, which is FDX. Expediency and getting to the finish line should be the priority for all, and the industry standard that has broad adoption is the one that we would like to support and see appointed.
Feature image courtesy Nrth Festival.