The Bank of Canada just handed out hall passes to 300 fintech companies. And unlike the bureaucratic paper-pushing exercises we’ve become numb to, this one actually matters.
Last week, the Bank published its first registry of payment service providers under the Retail Payments Activities Act—companies like Wealthsimple, Koho, Brim, Venn, Helcim, and Shopify that are now officially recognized as legitimate players in Canada’s payments infrastructure. For context, 1,500 more are waiting for approval.
This matters more than another regulatory milestone: these registrations are tickets to the game that banks have monopolized for generations.
Historically, fintech companies had to partner with banks to access payment rails—the infrastructure that actually moves money. Let that sink in. You had to rent infrastructure from your competitors. You had to pay fees to the very institutions you were trying to disrupt. You had to play nice with organizations without incentive to help you succeed.
Saud Aziz, co-founder of business banking platform Venn, put it bluntly: “It meant we effectively had to work with banks to compete against the banks.”
That’s not competition. That’s a protection racket with regulatory approval.
The RPAA creates a new legal framework that does three critical things:
Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers recently called Canada’s banking system an “oligopoly”—noting the Big Six control over 90% of banking assets and are more profitable than peers in most other advanced countries. She didn’t mince words about the impact: “clear negative impacts on productivity, innovation, capital allocation, cost and consumer choice.”
That’s not a think-piece opinion. That’s the second-most-powerful person at Canada’s central bank stating facts on the record.
The Real-Time Rail, set to launch in 2026, will process payments that send, clear, and settle almost instantly, 24/7/365. More importantly, it’s designed to let fintechs participate directly rather than through bank intermediaries. The system is API-ready and designed as a platform for innovation, allowing participants to develop new overlay and competitive services.
The C.D. Howe Institute estimates RTR will add over $3 billion to the Canadian economy in its first five years just from efficiency gains. But that’s conservative accounting. The real value is in what gets built when you remove the gatekeepers.
If you’re a CTO or CIO at a fintech, this is your green light. The infrastructure moat that protected incumbents is eroding. Start planning your RTR integration now—2026 will be here faster than your procurement process.
If you’re at a traditional lender or bank, wake up. The competitive advantages you’ve enjoyed weren’t because you were better— they were because the system was designed to keep challengers out. That design just changed.
If you’re an underwriting leader, think about what real-time settlement enables: immediate fund verification, instant loan disbursements, and automated repayments that don’t bounce three days later. The operational efficiencies alone should have you rethinking your entire stack.
We’ve seen regulatory changes before that promised transformation and delivered paperwork. This one feels different because the infrastructure is actually being built. The Real-Time Rail is in testing. The registrations are published. The rhetoric from regulators isn’t aspirational—it’s declarative.
So here’s what executives should be asking: when fintechs can clear transactions in seconds without bank intermediaries, when consumers can switch providers by sharing data rather than closing accounts, when the cost of innovation drops because you’re not paying rent to incumbents—what does your business model look like?
Because ready or not, we’re about to find out.