The most important financial technology announcements rarely sound exciting at first. "Payments infrastructure partnership" isn't exactly going to trend on social media. But strip away the press release language and what Peoples Group and Fiserv just announced is one of the more consequential infrastructure moves in Canadian fintech in recent memory.
For the first time in its history, Payments Canada has admitted non-bank financial technology companies as members. If that sentence doesn’t make you sit up a little straighter, consider this: the organization processes more than $411 billion every single business day, and it just opened its doors to companies that move faster, build leaner, and think differently about how money should work.
If you're running a challenger bank, neobank, or fintech in Canada and you're not popping champagne right now, you haven't been paying attention.
November's federal budget is supposed to include the next legislative phase for open banking. If you're a Canadian fintech executive, you've heard this song before. The difference this time? Multiple sources, speaking to industry media under the condition of anonymity, say that government officials and lobby groups are telling them it's real. Phase 2 legislation (covering common rules and accreditation frameworks) is apparently ready for its debut on Nov. 4.