Creating a unified commerce experience for Canadians

An interview with Sander Meijers, Canada Country Manager at Adyen.

Adyen is a global financial technology platform that helps major brands seamlessly manage online, in-app and in-store payments while allowing marketplaces to integrate embedded financial products — like capital and card issuance — directly into their own systems.

Sander Meijers, Canada Country Manager at Adyen tells us about their decision to become a Payments Canada member, their perspective on Canada's forthcoming Real-Time Rail (RTR) and what’s next for them as they expand into the Canadian payment ecosystem. 

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What was the motivation behind your organization’s decision to join Payments Canada? What is the value of membership to your organization?
This membership is the culmination of a deliberate, multi-year effort to embed ourselves in the Canadian payment ecosystem. Earlier this year we joined Fintechs Canada to build community ties and our registration under the Bank of Canada's Retail Payment Activities Act laid the regulatory groundwork. Payments Canada membership is the first step to system participation, which would give us a direct line into Canada’s national payment infrastructure and a voice in shaping how the system evolves. This ultimately builds access for our Canadian and global clients to the financial rails, helping them with faster and easier payments. With the RTR set to launch this year, there is real momentum building in Canada's payment landscape and we wanted to be positioned at the table as that infrastructure takes shape. For a global platform with deep experience in real-time and account-to-account payments in markets like Europe, membership means we can bring that perspective into the Canadian conversation early.

Are you currently in or intend to start the application process to become an RTR payment system participant? 
Real-time, account-to-account payment rails are infrastructure we've seen transform other markets and we believe Canada is ready for that same shift. The demand is real and our merchants are keen to adopt it. Canada is heading toward a multi-rail reality, with the RTR alongside Interac, card networks and open banking on the horizon. As a platform that already helps large, complex businesses move money quickly and securely, we will be able to help our merchants build an intelligent payment stack, including the RTR as core infrastructure.

How will your organization use Canada’s RTR to benefit Canadian consumers, businesses and the overall Canadian payment industry? 
Real-time settlement compresses float, reduces chargeback friction and opens the door to account-to-account payments at scale. For Canadian businesses, that's an invitation to start treating payments as a conversion and margin lever — something we've helped merchants do as real-time infrastructure matured in markets like the UK, Netherlands and Brazil. For consumers, it means faster pay-ins, refunds and transfers. For the industry, the key is ensuring broad access, so businesses of all sizes, from small merchants to large enterprises, can benefit from modern rails at the same time while maintaining the highest bar for safety.

What initial and long-term benefits do your organization and your clients expect to see from the use of the RTR?
We expect digital-first businesses, utilities, for example, to move fastest, along with small businesses that get access to real-time payments through the accounting and finance platforms they already use.

Longer term, the bigger opportunity is making sure Canada builds real use cases alongside the new infrastructure, not just the pipes. The UK's Faster Payments launched in 2008 but took almost a decade to catch on with merchants because the practical use cases came later. Brazil took the opposite approach with Pix — building in consumer use cases from day one — and reached 150 million users in two years. Canada has the advantage of learning from both examples instead of starting from scratch. What we want for our customers is for Canada to find its own version of that fast, practical adoption story.

As a Payments Canada member, how will your organization's growth plans benefit Canadian businesses and consumers?
Adyen's growth in Canada has been deliberate, growing from a team of eight in 2022 to over 40 people today, with a presence in Toronto and Montreal. That growth mirrors the trajectory of our Canadian clients, companies like Lightspeed, Wave, Air Canada, Aritzia and Groupe Dynamite, who are increasingly operating across borders, channels and currencies. As we grow, we're investing in the infrastructure that lets Canadian businesses compete globally. Unified commerce that connects online and in-store, AI-driven fraud protection and now a direct role in shaping national payment infrastructure through our Payments Canada membership. For consumers, that growth should be mostly invisible because the point of good payment infrastructure is that people do not need to think about it. But it shows up in fewer false fraud declines, faster refunds and more seamless experiences regardless of how or where they choose to shop. We see our Payments Canada membership as a way to make sure that growth translates into infrastructure improvements the whole ecosystem benefits from.

What payment trends or technologies do you think will have the greatest impact on the way we pay in the future? How will expanded Payments Canada membership eligibility support this change?
Two things are coming together: faster payment infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI). Real-time rails get rid of the delays that have shaped how we pay for decades, while AI changes how transactions get checked and approved. On fraud, AI lets systems look at the full picture instead of just flagging anything unusual, so a Canadian shopper buying something abroad isn't automatically blocked if the system can see they're on a trip they’ve already booked. That same intelligence supports dynamic identification — recognizing a customer in the moment, across whatever channel they're using, instead of treating each transaction like a stranger. Broader Payments Canada membership helps here too, since it brings more voices, including global fintechs, into building Canada's next generation of real-time, data-rich payment infrastructure.

About Adyen

Adyen is a global financial technology platform that helps businesses accept and manage payments, whether a customer is paying online, in an app or in-store. Companies like Air Canada, Lightspeed, Uber, Aritzia and Groupe Dynamite rely on Adyen to process transactions across channels and around the world through a single platform.