Does Neo intend to participate in Payments Canada’s Realtime Rails (RTR) network?
Canada is the only country in the G7 without a clearance system that works in realtime, so this is a welcome improvement to our sovereign infrastructure, but banks need to sign on.
With the Big Five (Six?) dragging their heels on commitments, perhaps there’s an opportunity for Neo to carve out some brand equity in being an early adopter. Waiting three days for payments to clear is a pain in the butt for both the sender and receiver).
Though, granted this will only be a benefit for people who bank with an institution that’s a part of the RTR network.
Seems like a no-brainer to me, but maybe banks have to rebuild all their tech to make it work? Might just be a ton of work to make e-transfers like 5 minutes faster.
Yeah wouldn’t make much difference for interac etransfers… the difference between instant and 30 minutes is nbd for most people.
There’s a little more to it than that though. Bank to bank transfers currently take 3-5 business days. Cheque clearing takes the same or longer.
For anyone who’s moved money to or from their Neo account with direct deposit or withdrawal, this would solve that and enable those transactions to clear instantly.
The Real-Time Rail (RTR) system will be a major improvement for Canadians. It could also help reduce certain types of fraud, especially cheque-related fraud, as traditional cheques gradually become less necessary.
In this day and age, there really shouldn’t be a need to rely on cheques or wait several business days for payments to clear. We should be able to open our banking apps and instantly send money directly to virtually any Canadian bank account, without being limited to Interac e-Transfer.
Hopefully, RTR will finally bring Canada’s banking system closer to what modern banking should look like: fast, convenient, accessible, and secure.
I think the clearance lag for cheques and EFTs is specifically for mitigating fraud, isn’t it? So banks can communicate with each other and see if the funds are available and haven’t already been moved?