Payments Canada Revises Launch Timing of RTR Payments System

An extension in the delivery date (or ‘go-live date’) will provide the company additional time to validate and test the components and end-to-end integration of the RTR system.

Payments Canada has recognised that there will be impacts for the payment ecosystem in Canada. Its members, regulators, stakeholders and the broader payment industry are important contributors to a safe, secure, competitive and innovative real-time payment system for businesses and consumers in Canada.

The company has said it couldn’t have been successful in the launch of Lynx without the industry’s participation and the same is true of the RTR. Payments Canada is working closely with these groups to replan and confirm a revised launch date, which it will share publicly once confirmed.

Although solution delivery is delayed, activities in other workstreams, including the delivery of the legal framework, are continuing.

Progress continues on Lynx Release Two, which will introduce the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard to the Lynx system. At the end of August, Payments Canada successfully completed industry testing, a collaborative effort with involvement from Nexi, IBM, the Bank of Canada, Payments Canada, its Lynx participants and the vendor community.

Together, it completed over 7,000 test cases to ensure the system is ready to go live in November of this year. With the completion of industry testing, Payments Canada’s focus has shifted toward implementation readiness. In less than 50 days, Canada’s high-value payment system will be ISO 20022-enabled.

Tracey Black, president and CEO of Payments Canada, said: “I’d like to acknowledge the Payments Canada teams that ensure Canada’s payment systems operate reliably.

“The Rogers outage on July 8 impacted consumers and businesses across Canada. I am proud to share that Lynx, Canada’s high-value payment system, and the Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS) remained fully operational and there was no degradation in production. This unexpected outage demonstrated the resilience and reliability of Canada’s core payment infrastructure.”

Throughout the third quarter of 2022, the ACSS cleared and settled 2.3 billion payments valued at $2.2trillion, and Lynx cleared and settled 3.1 million payments valued at $25.9trillion. In Q3, we also marked one year of operating Lynx. In its first year of operations, Lynx cleared and settled 12 million payments valued at ​$115trillion.

Black continued: “As part of our ongoing commitment to advancing understanding and developing forward-thinking leaders within the payment industry, we continued our partnership with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto to offer The Business of Payments program. The most recent session held in September was fully subscribed, with senior leaders from several companies coming together in person to discuss the changing payments landscape.”