As commerce becomes increasingly digital, automated, and global, the way money moves must evolve alongside it. Payments are no longer confined to checkout moments or business hours. Today, payments are increasingly embedded into platforms and software and beginning to support automated, always‑on workflows.
For more than 40 years, Interac has played a central role in connecting Canadians to trusted payment experiences at national scale. In 2025, Interac enabled more than 8.5 billion secure transactions through Interac Debit, Interac e-Transfer and the Interac Verified suite of solutions.
Today, the Interac Innovation Team is exploring how emerging digital asset capabilities, including tokenised deposits and stablecoins, could complement and extend the infrastructure Canadians already rely on, while preserving the trust, reliability, and governance expectations that come with operating critical financial infrastructure.
We’re approaching this with a pragmatic lens. Rather than treating digital money as a wholesale replacement for what works today, we’re examining how emerging technologies can complement existing rails. At Interac, our focus is exploring how the ecosystem can evolve by combining the resilience and oversight of established infrastructure with new capabilities like programmability and automation.
What Are Digital Assets?
In a payments context, “digital assets” refers to digitally represented forms of value that can be moved and settled using modern infrastructure. As payment systems evolve, financial institutions and infrastructure providers are increasingly focusing on forms of digital money—such as stablecoins and tokenized deposits—that combine the familiarity of existing financial instruments with new capabilities like programmability and always‑on availability.
Two forms of digital assets are especially relevant to the areas Interac is exploring: tokenized deposits and stablecoins.
Tokenised Deposits:
- Blockchain‑based versions of traditional bank deposits intended to preserve existing legal, regulatory, and balance‑sheet characteristics while adding programmability and faster settlement patterns.
Stablecoins:
- Stablecoins are a type of digital money designed to maintain a stable value, usually linked to a traditional currency like the dollar. They are commonly used to move funds quickly in digital systems and can work across different platforms and networks.
The Payments‑First Approach at Interac
The approach taken by Interac is grounded in a deliberate choice: start with real payment problems, not technology.
Digital assets introduce new capabilities, but they are also complex, evolving, and dependent on broader ecosystem alignment. Leading with technology alone risks creating solutions that are difficult to scale, operate, or integrate into existing systems. Instead, the focus has been on identifying where existing payment flows face constraints—such as settlement timing, reconciliation, or cross‑platform coordination—and assessing where new rails could address those gaps in a practical, controlled way.
This approach ensures that any exploration is directly tied to real use cases, while maintaining the governance, transparency, and operational safeguards required for infrastructure operating at national scale.
To make this exploration actionable, the exploration has been structured as a phased approach.
The objective of this phased model is to reduce uncertainty and inform decision‑making across three critical dimensions:
- Where a credible role exists: Clarifying where Interac can add value within the evolving digital asset landscape, consistent with its role as neutral infrastructure rather than a product provider.
- What an interoperable operating model requires: Understanding how digital asset rails can connect with existing payment systems, financial institutions, and regulatory frameworks—without creating fragmentation or parallel ecosystems.
- How the ecosystem can evolve through coexistence: Assessing how traditional rails and tokenized forms of money can operate alongside each other over time, rather than assuming a wholesale replacement.
Interoperability is a central pillar of this approach. Canada’s payments ecosystem depends on broad participation and coordination across institutions, and any new form of digital money must be able to connect into that system to be viable at scale. Without interoperability, there is a risk of creating siloed networks that increase complexity, reduce efficiency, and weaken trust.
By taking a phased, interoperability‑first approach, Interac is able to explore digital asset capabilities in a way that is pragmatic, future‑ready, and aligned with the role of a trusted national network, ensuring that any evolution in payment infrastructure strengthens the ecosystem, rather than fragmenting it.
From Digital Assets to Digital Infrastructure
Digital assets are entering a new phase of maturity. Across global markets, institutions are increasingly treating tokenised deposits, stablecoins, and blockchain‑based settlement as infrastructure components designed to improve how value moves, settles, and reconciles across complex networks.
For Interac, the exploration is not about creating parallel payment systems. It’s about understanding how new capabilities—like always‑on availability, programmable payments, and cross‑platform interoperability—can be introduced in a way that strengthens (rather than fragments) the Canadian ecosystem.
Canada’s payments ecosystem is also likely to evolve in stages: established rails continue to provide broad reach and trusted operating models, while tokenised forms of money become more relevant over time as interoperability infrastructure develops.
Why Is Interac Exploring the Future of Digital Money?
Exploring digital assets is a natural extension of the work Interac has always done: building solutions that enable trusted, interoperable money movement at a national scale along with strong consumer protection.
For decades, Interac has held a central place in the Canadian economy, bringing together financial institutions, merchants, platforms, and consumers through shared rails that prioritise reliability, security, and broad participation. As money and commerce continue to evolve, that connective role becomes even more important.
Digital assets introduce new capabilities such as programmability, continuous availability, and new interoperability patterns. But digital assets also raise important questions around governance, trust, and integration. Interac is well positioned to help the ecosystem explore those questions in a way that remains anchored in Canadian priorities and infrastructure‑grade expectations.
Interac Brings Three Distinct Strengths to the Digital Assets Landscape
Trust at Scale
Interac operates infrastructure Canadians already rely on every day. That trust is earned through rigorous governance, security, and alignment with Canada’s regulatory and public‑interest objectives. Applying these principles to digital assets can help ensure innovation strengthens the payments ecosystem.
Orchestration and Interoperability
Interac holds a central position in Canada’s financial ecosystem, helping connect financial institutions, acquirers, merchants, government organizations, and consumers. This position enables coordination across emerging digital asset rails and existing payment systems, supporting interoperability rather than creating new silos.
A Bridge Between Today and What’s Next
The approach taken is intentionally evolutionary. The exploration focuses on how tokenised deposits and stablecoins might coexist with today’s payment rails, and where they can extend the ecosystem with capabilities such as programmability, automation, and new digital‑first experiences, without abandoning what already works well in Canada.
Why This Matters for Canada
Canada’s payments ecosystem has long been defined by trust, stability, and broad participation. However, economic competitiveness increasingly depends on whether Canada has strong domestic rails that can evolve with global commerce. As tokenised forms of money and new settlement models scale internationally, countries that move early will shape standards, liquidity corridors, and interoperability norms. If Canada lacks a credible domestic pathway, more payment activity can default to foreign rails and frameworks—making Canadian institutions less competitive and reducing Canada’s ability to influence how digital money works at scale.
That’s why we’re not exploring how to build new technology. Instead, our focus is on paths to understand how Canada could maintain a trusted, domestic interoperability layer—a national rail, such as Interac, that can connect established payment systems with emerging digital asset rails in a controlled, governable way. Without a strong Canadian stablecoin or tokenised deposit infrastructure, there is a risk that foreign networks become the de facto settlement layer for certain digital flows, which could weaken domestic oversight and resilience over time.
By exploring digital asset capabilities within Canada’s regulatory and institutional frameworks, Interac is helping to strengthen the innovation environment so Canadian businesses, financial institutions, and policymakers have a domestic foundation to build on, rather than relying on external systems by default. In practical terms, that means future‑proofing Canada’s payments backbone, so it remains a competitive asset for Canadian commerce: trusted at scale, interoperable by design, and aligned with public‑interest outcomes as global standards mature.
Looking Ahead
The exploration of digital money by Interac reflects a broader commitment to innovation that is pragmatic, inclusive, and grounded in real‑world needs. The goal is not disruption for its own sake—it is to ensure that Canadians, businesses, and institutions can continue to move money with confidence as commerce becomes increasingly digital, automated, and global.
Disclaimer
This exploratory work was conducted by the Interac Innovation team using non‑production, ring‑fenced test environments. It is intended to assess potential future roles and capabilities and does not represent a production deployment or a commercial commitment.
