(More) Real time delays
After writing about delays for the UK’s proposed New Payment Architecture (NPA) earlier this week in “New Payments Architecture: It’s been a while” news arrives from Canada.
Payments Canada’s Real-Time Rail (RTR) payments system is part of a multi-year, multi-system payments modernisation initiative. RTR will allow Canadians to initiate payments and receive irrevocable funds in seconds, 24/7/365. The system will also tap the ISO 20022 messaging standard to support payment information traveling with every payment.
In October 2022, Payments Canada announced that the launch of Canada’s Real-Time Rail (RTR) payments system has been pushed back from the middle of 2023 to an undetermined date – the purpose of the delay was to “provide additional time to validate and test the components and end-to-end integration of the RTR system”.
By June 2023, the exchange component of RTR, provided by Interac, was completed and allowed for the exchange of payment messages in real-time.
In June 2023, Payments Canada announced that it would be conducting a second review of the proposed Real-Time Rail (RTR) payments system which would push the delivery deadline for the troubled project further into the future. At the time Payments Canada said that the current delivery delays were “unrelated to the exchange technology components.”
Following the completion of the second review Payments Canada have announced this month (April 2024) that they will be resuming the proposed Real-Time Rail (RTR) payments system with “renewed momentum.”
It appears that the second piece of the project, building the real-time clearing and settlement component, is not yet finished. This process to complete these aspects of RTR will continue through 2024 prior to initiating testing through 2025 and industry testing in 2026.
This means that the launch of Canada’s much delayed Real-Time Rail (RTR) payments system will now not happen until at least 2026, and will be progressed with new tech partners IBM and CGI brought in to the process.
A full launch date has not been provided, with Payments Canada interim co-CEO Jude Pinto saying:
We know the ecosystem is anticipating the launch of the RTR, and we will have further details to share in the coming months.
Although Payments Canada’s announcement welcomed IBM and CGI as new tech partners to work alongside Interac it made no mention of Mastercard-owned Vocalink who were initially contracted with providing the clearing and settlement infrastructure, with TCS onboard as integration lead.
Our collective focus is on building a sustainable real-time payment system that will support long-term payment innovation and the continued advancement of our economy, Canada’s international economic competitiveness and provide value and benefit to Canadian consumers and businesses.
Jude Pinto, interim-CEO Payments Canada
This latest plan for the RTR revises the original launch date of as early as 2019 to 2026 at the earliest.
By comparison the other component of Canada’s payments modernisation initiative, the Lynx high-value payment system, successfully launched in 2021.