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You should come visit Canada, the level of service we get from our oligopoly of banks would make you cry. They would NEVER support a service like this as it would possibly make their customers happy.

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Although I agree that this criticism of Canadian banks is probably broadly true, note that the banks did manage to coordinate on Interac, a quite serviceable standard for sending money electronically between private parties.

Canadian banks have been quietly dropping the Interac network in favour of co-badged cards that use the VISA network behind the scenes. Your interact card says Visa on it now, because the debit transaction might be routed through Visa's network instead.

I'm guessing the benefit to banks is lower fees or perhaps even monetization through transaction data sharing with Visa?

This of course breaks Interac features like Interac online.

Last time I opened a bank account and got a co-badged Interac card I immediately asked them if I could get an "Interac Only" card. At first they had no idea what I was talking about, but a few phone calls to head office later, and they were able to re-issue new debit cards without the Visa co-badge. Interac online works, and I feel better not sharing purchase data with Visa.

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