Our position: Canada's payment edge should be open

The rails are shared. The edge is not.

Canada has national payment rails already in place. Interac e-Transfer moves funds between banks using a Canadian rail. Payments Canada manages the shared systems below this. In August 2026, Payments Canada published a Real-Time Rail participation guide for payment service providers. Access to these rails is expanding. Since the retail payments law, the RPAA, came into force on September 8, 2025, registered payment service providers that are also FINTRAC-registered money services businesses may apply to join Interac e-Transfer. Neo Financial became a participant in April 2026.

The edge is a different story. The acceptance edge is the QR code on the counter, the scanner beside the till, and the receipt. Today that edge is gated. Interac's Business Request Money has no public API. It is distributed by 5 financial institutions, BMO, CIBC, Scotiabank, DC Bank, and Peoples Trust, or by payment providers riding on them. Canada has no QR payment standard in force. EY published a CANQR spec in 2020, but nothing mandates it. Payments Canada itself calls QR payments nascent in Canada.

We believe this split is reversed. According to Statistics Canada, about 50.5% of Canadian retailers accept e-Transfer. These rails function as shared national infrastructure. The edge that connects to them should be open as well. This article states our position plainly under our own name.

What an open edge looks like

An open edge allows any corner store to build a payment terminal using existing equipment. An old computer and a $20 webcam are sufficient. The scanner software we plan to build will run on old PCs with webcams, Raspberry Pi kiosks, old Android phones, and USB barcode scanners. If a store has no camera at all, they can type a short code by hand.

That terminal will be deliberately simple. It will display a code and a result. It will hold no bank credentials and no power to transfer funds. The customer's bank and phone handle all important tasks. The hardware at the counter only provides direction and confirmation.

The principles we hold

• A QR code is a pointer, never money. It carries only a link to a single payment intent. A photocopy of it must never authorize anything.
• Authorization always happens at the customer's own bank, in their own app, with their own credentials. Never on our screens, and never on the store's.
• Terminals stay dumb by design. The scanner never holds credentials or the authority to move money.
• Evidence, never custody. map.ca confirms a payment from the verified Interac notification email. It requires the notice to come from payments.interac.ca and the receiving mail host to report a passing DKIM signature for Interac. It never touches the money. Our own receiving loop has confirmed real deposits this way since 2026-08-16.
• Email evidence is evidence, not the money itself. The bank balance is the only final truth, and our confirmations are labelled that way.

What we will publish

We will publish the acceptance edge as an open standard. This includes 3 things: the QR spec, the payment-intent format, and the scanner software. Code will be released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Written specifications will be released under a CC BY licence. Anyone can use them, including our competitors.

The design allows space for regulated adapters underneath. A bank connection might one day provide confirmation instead of an email. The edge remains unchanged if that occurs. The pointer stays a pointer, and the terminal stays dumb.

We invite you to participate. If you develop software, use the spec to find flaws and make improvements. If you manage a shop, let us know what your counter requires and assist with testing. An open edge is only useful if others use it.

Honest limits

We will not overstate this. These limits exist.

Another realistic figure: a high-volume store with a business account might pay its bank between $1 and $1.50 for each transfer received. This depends on the store's banking relationship, but the cost remains much lower than card rates.

Signed: map.ca, Owen Sound, Ontario. 2026-08-31.

1. e-Transfer is slower than tap-to-pay. Confirmation takes between 10 and 90 seconds. A bank may hold a first transfer to a new recipient for several hours. This method works well for bakeries, farm gates, market stalls, and small counters. It is not suitable for supermarket lines.
2. Payments are final. e-Transfer lacks a reversal function. To issue a refund, you must send a new e-Transfer.
3. Regulated functions remain regulated. Payment service providers must register with the Bank of Canada before they perform retail payment activities. According to its FAQ dated August 14, 2026, using Interac e-Transfer does not exempt a service from the RPAA. map.ca will respect that. We will register before we perform any regulated activity. We will also ask regulators in writing before we ship anything near that line.