In this episode, we discuss the recent expansion of Payments Canada membership for payment service providers, and explore its broader mission.

Guest: Rondev Bhattacharya, Director of Industry Relations at Payments Canada

The Simplify Payments Podcast, presented by Paramount Commerce, is a podcast series that takes a closer look at new and emerging financial technologies and practices with some amazing industry experts.

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Full episode transcript:

Varad Mehta: Early this year, Payments Canada announced the first five payment service providers who became a Payments Canada member. This is a huge moment for the Canadian payment space. So to explain why this matters and what Payments Canada is, we spoke with Rondev Bhattacharya, the Director of Industry Relations at Payments Canada. So please sit back and enjoy the show. So, Rondev, how we always begin this podcast is by asking you a few fun questions. So I have two fun questions for you. The first one is, what's the most important lesson that baseball coaching has taught you in life?

Rondev Bhattacharya: Oh, you did your research, so I'm glad to see that. I think resilience. I think often we look at, you know, winning and what comes with that, but it's really about losing and how you build yourself back up. And learning how to bounce back into place. I think it's really important because I coached youth baseball for many years. I also sit on the Brampton Minor Baseball Incorporated executive board to this day. And I think resilience is probably the biggest thing. It's not about the winning. It's about how you bounce back after you lose.

VM: I love that. And if you could have played any sport professionally, what would it be?

RB: Probably baseball. Yeah, I played baseball at the travel rep level for many years. And maybe I'm ageing myself here, but we didn't have university baseball in the Canadian university system when I went to school. It had just come out actually the last year of school. And when you play at a high level and you give it up for a couple of years, it's really hard. It's not an on and off switch to get back into it. So I would say professional baseball. Thank you for those questions.

VM: Now going into the topic of discussion, we're going to talk about Payments Canada and Payments Canada membership and why it is important. So, Rondev, my first question for you would be: Can you give a brief explanation of what Payments Canada is and what its role is within the Canadian payment space and just the overall Canadian economy?

RB: Yeah, thank you for that question. So Payments Canada was created by an Act of Parliament almost 50 years ago. And the actual name of the legislation is the Canadian Payments Act, and we have a few legislated mandates, and I'll read them out to you: establish and operate national systems for the clearing and settlement of payments and other arrangements for the making or exchange of payments. Facilitate the interaction of its clearing and settlement system and related arrangements with other systems involved in the exchange, clearing, or settlement of payments. Facilitate the development of new payment methods and technologies. And obviously, in doing these things, we have an objective of promoting efficiency, safety, and soundness of these said systems.

And currently we have two systems that we have online. One is called Lynx, that's for your high-value payments, and we have the Automated Clearing Settlement System, or otherwise known as ACSS, which is more for your day-to-day transactions. Think of us akin to the plumbing for the national economy. Behind the scenes, we make the national economy go, in my opinion.

And, you know, when we look at our purpose and our public policy objectives, maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but I look at us as ubiquity, making sure payments are ubiquitous, which really means to me that as a Canadian, I can pay however I want, whenever I want, wherever I want.

Another tidbit for you, just to give you some amplification of what Payments Canada means in terms of dollar amounts. The value of payments cleared by our systems in 2025 was approximately 103 trillion dollars, and that works out to about 412 billion dollars every business day.

VM: Wow. Now, would you, Rondev, explain what was the idea behind the membership expansion with payment service providers?

RB: Yeah, like traditionally when the CP Act was created, we had certain members that were allowable under the legislation. And the payments landscape, not just in Canada but globally, has changed so much. And as we look to expand our membership, which we did through an amendment to the CP Act last September, our membership now allows payment service providers, or PSPs, that are registered under the RPAA, under the Bank of Canada.

And, you know, at the end of the day, when you have robust membership, you're going to actually have new ideas that are brought to the table, and you're going to have different thought capital, different lenses to look at things, and different perspectives. When you have those varying perspectives, you know, I think that causes the ideal conditions to help with innovation, come up with really new cool ways of payment processing, payment innovation, etc., etc.

So I think the main impetus was also to create another means for fair and equity in terms of other players coming into our membership. Now they have the opportunity to come as a Payments Canada member and have the potential for direct access to one of our systems.

VM: And do you foresee, like as you mentioned innovation, how does this membership, in any details as possible, how does that amplify the amount of innovation that a payment service provider can do within Canada's payments economy with the support of Payments Canada's membership?

RB: Yeah, like first of all, you know, we invite PSPs that have been approved on the RPAA to apply for membership. That's step number one. And it's a very, I would say, very simple process. You know, I think it's a matter of weeks if all the documentation, all the requirements are fulfilled. It's a matter of weeks before you do get approved. The application goes to our board for formal approval, but our team is here to help with that.

And after you become a member, it does allow you the ability to be a part of our governance structure where we have various committees, councils, working groups, etc., where you have a voice at the table as a PSP. You know, not that we would ignore voices that are not part of our membership, but now as a member you truly have the ability to sit on a committee as a part of our governance structure.

So we have something called the Member Advisory Council, which is 20 members that represent the greater membership, and we have about 115-plus members where we ask for their advice and they advise our board directly, our board of directors at Payments Canada, on issues we're trying to solve. How do we make things better? How do we deal with this complex problem coming up? And we meet on a regular basis to tackle these. And the PSPs now have this new platform.

And again, going back to the other question, it is great to have that lens. It's great, that thought capital process, different perspectives. I think it tackles very complex things and you have different ways of looking at it. And I'm not diminishing or minimising how we look at things today, but I think it's nothing but a complement to what we're doing today.

VM: And I'd like to go back to something you just mentioned: what is the process like in becoming a Payments Canada member? Like, can you maybe talk more about that? How long is the process? And I'm sure you must do a lot of checks in the background to ensure that whoever you're working with, they are, you know, they're the best representation of Payments Canada.

RB: Yeah, that's a fair question. And even in anticipation of the CP Act changing in September, we had engaged with many PSPs, including Paramount Commerce. And the first step is, you know, signing an NDA with us. It's pretty standard and our team can facilitate the execution of that. After the NDA is signed, we do provide the application for membership.

We also, you know, encourage participation in the RTR, our upcoming system that is launching. And so we're allowed—basically, that NDA locks the ability for accessing important artefacts and documents to understand what participation in the RTR is.

But membership, typically, you know, filling out the form, getting all the documentation together—there is a checklist. I would call it a simple checklist, but getting the documents can be complex. In just recent times and seeing Paramount Commerce and other new members come across, I've seen it take as little as a few weeks and in some instances it takes a bit longer than that. But really that's the process.

And once you become a member, we do welcome you with a welcome package to Payments Canada and talk about all those great things about participating in our committees and our councils.

VM: I love that. From your perspective, how do you see, as a payment service provider becomes a Payments Canada member, after that, what benefits would it provide to Canadian businesses and consumers? If there's an innovation angle, what do you see as the core benefits for these groups?

RB: By the ability of them becoming members and potential participants directly into our systems, what that allows them to do is unlock different use cases, different innovation, different product ideas, new things to the market that we haven't seen before. What does that ultimately mean? That means that they can bring some super excellent value to their end customers and to Canadians in general.

VM: My next question would be, Rondev: what role can PSP members play in shaping new payment infrastructure such as the Real-Time Rail?

RB: Yeah, great question, Varad. The Real-Time Rail allows for the infrastructure to have instant payments up to 100,000 dollars. So imagine being able to send that amount of payments and it could be received within seconds or sent within seconds.

You know, from that perspective, we look to the market and our participants to come up with use cases that they believe will benefit their businesses and their end customers. One such thing that we've come across in talking to many PSPs and current members as well is earned wage access. What that really means is, think about the gig worker, think about employees that would prefer to get paid after every shift instead of having to wait a two-week cycle or a monthly cycle. Think about the rideshare provider that will pick up a customer and drop them off, and they can instantaneously get paid as soon as that ride is completed. These are the things that we believe the structure through the RTR will unlock.

There's many other use cases that we've heard in consultation with both stakeholders and members, but that's one that's predominantly coming up over and over again. But there's so many other ones that I think would benefit the market, but we leave it up to the market, in terms of our participants that are going through the criteria, to come up with these ideas.

VM: This ties so well into my last question. This is such a big moment for Payments Canada, for payments in Canada, and for payment service providers who want to level up their innovation, who want to make payments safer, smoother for their consumers, for the businesses that they're serving. So looking ahead, how do you see Payments Canada membership helping to drive a more competitive, innovative, and efficient payments landscape in Canada?

RB: Yeah, I think this is a great question. I'm glad that you've asked it. Just as mentioned before, when you have additional voices at the table and different voices at the table, I think you have no choice but to realise innovation, at least consider it. And I think having these different voices coming—and they're coming, like, I can tell you right now, you know, there's been several new membership inquiries. You know, we have well over 50 or so in terms of organisations we've talked to. We'll have announcements on new members. We had five new members in January. Paramount Commerce, congratulations to you. You were one of the first five. We'll have many more to come.

And I think as we integrate these new members into those councils, into our day-to-day here at Payments Canada, you're going to see some really cool thinking and different ways of thinking that's going to supplement, in terms of the innovation that we'd like to realise, again, to help that end customer.

I think, you know, if you've ever seen our quarterly video updates with our Chief Delivery Officer, Jude Pinto, you know, basically he always says more members and system participation is beneficial for everyone as it contributes to Canada's economic growth. So new membership always brings innovations, new ideas, new voices to the table, which we absolutely love and encourage. We want to see new members. We want to see that new way of thinking. It only benefits us all.

VM: I love it, and I couldn't have asked for a better podcast episode like this, because to understand what Payments Canada does is so important because you're working in the background and you need to be at the forefront so everyone can see what the hard work that Payments Canada does, as well as why this is such a big moment for Canada as PSPs have access to this membership.

So, Rondev, I want to thank you so much for joining us today and providing such great insights into what Payments Canada does and what this membership means. So thank you so much for this.

RB: Varad, thank you for having me on here, and again, congratulations on becoming a new member of Payments Canada.

VM: Thank you so much. I want to thank Rondev Bhattacharya for joining us today and providing his expertise and helping us understand why this is such a big moment for the Canadian payments space and what Payments Canada does. If you have any questions for us or Rondev, please do comment them down below. Don't forget to like and share this episode and also subscribe to our YouTube channel. For the episode transcript, please visit paramountcommerce.com.

Thank you so much for tuning into the Simplify Payments podcast presented by Paramount Commerce. We'll see you soon.