Introductions and Context
At the Payments Canada Summit, the panel "Unlocking the Strategic Value of Payments" brought together leaders from banking, fintech, and payments infrastructure to discuss how innovation in payments is reshaping the Canadian economy.
Opening the conversation, Hawkins framed the broader context of the summit:
"As we've heard over the past two and a half days, payments are clearing the way for growth in Canada and around the globe. From possibilities created by real-time payments to the game-changing nature of AI, there is no shortage of innovation across today's payment ecosystem."
Adriana Vega introduced Fintechs Canada as "the industry association for financial technology companies in the country," representing "more than 50 companies in the space, big and small, Canadian and international."
Michael Klopchic (RBC) explained that his role centers on transaction banking, spanning sales and servicing: "We put the products in the hands of our customers, and then we're there to fix it when it goes bump in the night."
Barclay Hancock (Central 1) described his organization as "an integrated treasury and payments organization" supporting "over 280 financial services organizations across the country," with roots in the credit union system, now expanding to other FIs and fintechs.
Dougal Middleton (J.P. Morgan) highlighted the collaborative nature of Canada's ecosystem: "I really enjoy the energy that this community brings in Canada to the payment space. It's so tight-knit, so many people, and everybody is so interlocked with all the outcomes that we're all driving towards."
The Adoption Gap
The conversation shifted toward the practical realities of adopting new payment technologies. Klopchic reflected on the contrast between the rapid pace of technological development and the slower pace of enterprise adoption.
"I spent last week in San Francisco. Fast forward to yesterday, spending the morning with CFOs in Ottawa, where the pace of change is not the same that we'd like."
Calling himself "an early adopter," he said the challenge for FIs is balancing innovation with customer absorption.
"We have to balance what we're bringing to market with the pace at which they can actually absorb it and adopt it."
"The value is there. We have to create the value. As much as the passion that we bring to it, the passion has to be translated into value for that end consumer and that end customer."
Drawing from RBC's HSBC integration experience, he illustrated how difficult large-scale transformation can be for enterprise customers with deeply embedded legacy systems.
"Some of them are saying, 'It took me seven years to build the platform that I have today, and you're asking me to move and make that change.'"
"And now we're introducing real-time rails, we're introducing all these developments. We've got to look at everything that they've actually built and change it."
The Cheque Problem
One of the strongest moments came when Klopchic pointed to the persistence of paper cheques in the Canadian economy, despite years of digital transformation efforts.
"We still have a lot of checks in the economy. And as much as I cannot stand checks, and I know all of you are with me on this, there are many, many consumers and companies that still use a check."
He added that adoption challenges are compounded by user behavior itself.
"The hardest part also is they don't cash it. They sit on it. And so you're trying to sell a real-time rail to somebody that wants a paper check and doesn't cash it."
For Klopchic, the long-term success of real-time payments will ultimately depend on demonstrating practical advantages in security, speed, and data quality.
"It's going to come back to the richness of the data, the safety of real-time rails. You can't forge a real-time rail or forge a check, and then the speed at which we can move things."
Two Customer Archetypes
Klopchic described the divide he sees among enterprise customers:
"Then you have the other group that say, 'I want to be a pilot customer. Anything that you can do to help me make my job easier.'"
He noted that treasury departments are often expected to absorb growing operational complexity without corresponding investment.
"We all know that treasury departments at our customer base is not the center of investment. The CEO will come along, buy another business. First thing they do is they go to the treasurer and CFO and say, 'Pull it in and get me on.' They don't ask how many more FTE do we need."
He shared one example involving a multinational corporation operating with a highly automated treasury model.
"One of our probably most successful stories, there is a multi-billion dollar business. North American footprint, actually multinational. They managed their treasury team with four people and 98% fully automated straight-through processing on reconciliation. That's the dream."
Vega: Acceleration
Vega described the current moment in payments with a single word: "acceleration."
"The fintech membership and the broader membership, they have been building products and deploying products for decades. And they have frankly been deploying products and building against the backdrop of a policy environment that wasn't really very enabling, that wasn't really fit for purpose."
"But I think the thought is changing. It's changing very rapidly."
She pointed to changing consumer behavior in Canada as evidence that momentum is building faster than many expected.
"The Canadian consumer might surprise us. Even just over the last year, one in four Canadians changed providers of financial services. And that's the fastest speed that we've ever seen in this country."
She cautioned against viewing developments such as open banking, stablecoins, and real-time rails as the conclusion of industry transformation.
"There could be a tendency amongst folks in this room to see, okay, this is the end, we've reached our goal. Open banking is going to be implemented and we have rails and stablecoins and that's the end of the movie."
"Actually, I think we see this more as a new beginning. All these pieces are coming together. And it's now really up to us to see where we drive this for the next three or four years."
Middleton: RTP Is More Than Speed
Middleton described real-time payments as far more transformative than simply faster settlement.
"Real-time payments are so much more than real-time settlement. They're really driving the change in how liquidity, risk management, and customer experience come together to really enable an always-on economy."
He highlighted the global scale of adoption: "almost 70 markets" are now live with competing RTP schemes, with transaction volumes projected to approach "500 billion by 2028."
From J.P. Morgan's vantage point: "We're live in about 20 different markets, so it's certainly a good vantage point to understand really how adoption, operating models, and control frameworks need to evolve."
According to Middleton, real-time payments fundamentally change the operating model of payments themselves.
"When you look at the characteristics of these RTP schemes — instant confirmation, data-rich payments, etc. — those things all start to shift the ecosystem from a batch-and-reconcile payment model to this transact-and-confirm model."
"The payment itself has really become the real-time signal for treasury and operations."
He emphasized that always-on payments create entirely new expectations around liquidity, fraud prevention, and operational resilience.
"Funding decisions, fraud management, education — they will have to come together in that one decision in a moment of time. And it has to happen at scale."
"You start to run into weekend funding cycles. Where weekend funding mechanisms don't exist in jurisdictions, that's a problem."
"The risk controls, they have to happen in time. They have to be strong enough, they have to happen instantly in the spend transaction time horizon, and be able to do that at scale. That's a huge leap for the model."
Hancock: Cash Flow in Real Time
Hancock described real-time rails as a major opportunity to modernize operational flows and improve the overall movement of money.
"It's so much more efficient with the product setup around capabilities and operationalizing the entire flows."
He pointed to opportunities both domestically and internationally, especially as interoperability between systems improves. Like several other panelists, he emphasized that the business side has the greatest immediate opportunity, while noting:
"There is still a lot of inertia on the consumer side with e-transfer."
For Hancock, one of the most compelling opportunities is the ability to make cash flow itself operate in real time:
"I'm really making cash flow real time as well as obviously the payment component."
He returned to the recurring theme of paper checks and wires as legacy processes ripe for disruption.
"Checks have been mentioned twice here — such an obvious opportunity to do amazing things."
"Wire is expensive, and it is not an easy customer experience."
Looking ahead:
"It should be interesting maybe here next year, talking about how do we really bring scale to RTP and making sure that the economics are attractive in terms of pulling volumes from other alternative rails."
Looking Ahead: What Canada Should Wish For
Vega — Ambition Without Reflexive Risk Elimination
"For me, what I think would be a mission, is that we're emerging from a long period of waiting and relating with friction to the policy environment. But the conditions are right now."
International peers are looking at Canada's transition with envy:
"In my conversations that I have with our peers around the world, they're actually looking at us with a little bit of envy."
"Even those people who already implemented RTP come and say, 'I wish I knew what I know now and that I could do it all over again.'"
"What I wish to see is that sustained level of ambition and that we don't pull back on our bias for risk elimination."
"We take things that we do very well in this country, but we have a tendency to eliminate risk completely rather than to embrace a certain level of managed risk."
Hancock — Whole-Ecosystem Participation
"What I get most excited about is making sure that the entire ecosystem is enabled — whether it's banks of all sizes, credit unions, PSDs, and others. That allows for more consistent and enhanced experiences for Canadians — more choices, more options, and more competition."
Middleton — $2–5 Trillion in Agentic Commerce by 2030
"This is going to be massive in a couple of different ways. It's going to drive trust in the commerce side."
"For commerce, that's agents moving from browsing to buying, all supported by trusted, verified payment services."
"We expect it to be two to five trillion dollars in payment volume by 2030."
"Think of a global treasury team operating with four people. What tools do they need to actually run a multinational corporation at that scale?"
"Agentic can help shift from insights into actual workflow execution, providing the support foundations."
"When you look at the Canadian context, yes, we can leverage AI and agency to accelerate commerce and accelerate treasury, but only if the ecosystem is built on trusted foundations, trusted networks, strong fraud controls, and really sound governance."
Closing the session, Hawkins thanked the panelists: "It's been a real pleasure to reflect on the future of payments with all of you, and I know we're in good hands."
Key Takeaways
- Central 1 supports 280+ financial services organizations; Fintechs Canada represents 50+ companies.
- Klopchic's pace gap: San Francisco → Ottawa, "the pace of change is not the same that we'd like."
- The cheque problem isn't just usage — "they don't cash it. They sit on it" — making RTP a hard sell.
- One RBC enterprise customer runs a multinational treasury with 4 people and 98% straight-through reconciliation — "that's the dream."
- 1 in 4 Canadians changed financial services providers in the past year — fastest churn ever observed.
- Almost 70 markets are live with RTP schemes; volumes projected near 500 billion by 2028.
- RTP shifts the model from "batch and reconcile" to "transact and confirm."
- Weekend funding cycles are an unsolved gap in many jurisdictions.
- Canada's late-mover position on RTR is enviable — peer markets that adopted earlier wish they could "do it all over again."
- Vega's warning: Canada's habitual risk-elimination reflex is now a brake on innovation.
- Agentic commerce projected at $2–5 trillion in payment volume by 2030.
- Hancock's preview: scaling RTP and making economics attractive enough to pull volume off legacy rails is the 2027 conversation.
