How to tell a real Interac e-Transfer email from a fake

The one real sender address

Interac e-Transfer notifications come from notify@payments.interac.ca. Interac sends from the interac.ca and payments.interac.ca domains, and nothing else. Treat any other sender domain as not Interac. Both money-request notices and deposit notices use this same address. Check the From address first, but do not rely on it alone. The address cannot tell you what kind of notice you have received. You must read the message itself to find out.

A real notice never carries an attachment

A genuine Interac e-Transfer email has no attachment. If a message claiming to be Interac arrives with a file attached, it is a scam, whatever the sender address says. Do not open it. Forward suspicious messages to phishing@interac.ca and then delete them.

One more rule worth knowing: once a transfer has been accepted, it cannot be cancelled.

Interac signs its mail, and honest providers reject fakes

Interac uses DKIM to sign its notification emails. The signing domain is payments.interac.ca. This signature allows receiving mail providers to verify the message originated from that domain. Interac also has a strict DMARC policy of reject for this domain. A conforming mail provider checks the email and refuses any forgeries claiming to be Interac. This enforcement occurs in practice. One Microsoft mail host bounced non-conforming mail with this error: "550 5.7.509 Access denied, sending domain [PAYMENTS.INTERAC.CA] does not pass DMARC verification and has a DMARC policy of reject." The practical result is positive. An attacker cannot easily forge a payments.interac.ca email that also carries a passing DKIM signature. One side effect is important to note. Forwarding can break DKIM, so forwarded copies of actual Interac mail may bounce at strict hosts. Rejections of forwarded Interac mail at Outlook are documented.

Deposit notice or money request? Read which one you have

A deposit notice tells you money arrived. A money request asks you to send funds. Both are real Interac products sent from notify@payments.interac.ca. Every authentic money request passes the same checks as a deposit notice. Scammers use this similarity to trick people. CIBC's fraud guidance suggests you verify any unexpected deposit or money-request notifications out of band. This means you should contact the person through a trusted channel instead of replying to the email. The sender address does not prove that the transaction is real.

Interception fraud is a known pattern

CIBC provides guidance on e-Transfer interception fraud. This fraud works because of how transfers function. If a transfer is sent without Autodeposit, it relies on a security question and answer. Bank agreements allow the bank to pay anyone who claims the funds. RBC's agreement states this applies even if the person is not your intended recipient. CIBC's terms state the same thing, and banks disclaim liability. Anyone who can read the notification and answer the question can take the money. Autodeposit removes the security question step. The funds then go directly to the recipient's registered bank account.

A real email is still not the money

An authentic Interac email provides strong evidence, but it is not settlement. A message with a valid DKIM signature will still show dkim=pass even if someone resends it. DKIM confirms the content and origin, but not how recent the message is. A deposit that appears complete can also be reversed. The National Fraud Detection Group (NFDG), which is the sending bank's fraud system, can claw back an Autodeposit hours after it seems successful. A report from 2026-01-13 shows this occurring without any error shown to the recipient. Notification emails can also lag behind the actual deposit by several hours. Use the email as a signal, but treat your bank account as the record.

What map.ca runs in production

map.ca accepts membership payments via Interac e-Transfer at give@map.ca. Since 2026-08-16, our own hardware and software have processed real deposits without manual help. The system checks every notification before a payment is confirmed. Sender domains must be interac.ca or payments.interac.ca. Mail authentication results must show dkim=pass for Interac. We deduplicate each Message-ID so a resent copy of a real email cannot count twice. A deposit that passes is marked email verified, not funds verified. Our code states: "A DKIM-pass Interac email is strong evidence, but the bank balance is the only truth." The bank balance is always the final check.