Speech: Opening remarks from The 2026 Payments Canada SUMMIT
Susan Hawkins, President and CEO of Payments Canada, took the stage to welcome over 2,300 delegates to the country’s most anticipated payment event.
Susan Hawkins
President and CEO
Susan Hawkins is the President and CEO of Payments Canada, leading the organization's next phase of development to meet the evolving payment needs of Canadians. Under her leadership, Payments Canada is focused on modern payment technology solutions that are safer, smarter and more accessible for Canada.
Note: Minor changes to the following remarks may have occurred during delivery
Toronto, May 5, 2026 – Good morning, and welcome to The 2026 Payments Canada SUMMIT!
Just a few weeks ago, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen returned to Earth after orbiting the moon — the first Canadian, and the first non-American, ever to travel beyond low Earth orbit. Standing before a crowd in Houston, still processing the enormity of what he had just experienced, he said something that stopped me cold:
“Small and powerless, yet powerful together.”
That is a statement about space exploration. But I believe it is also a statement about Canada — about what we are capable of when we commit to building something great, when we refuse to keep ourselves small, and when we invest in the critical infrastructure that lets us go further together.
Today, I want to talk about payment infrastructure through that same lens. Not as a technical subject. Not as a regulatory matter. But as an act of national ambition — one that will shape Canada’s economic future for a generation.
Payments are economic statecraft
Let me be direct about something that is often left unsaid in rooms like this.
Payment systems are not just plumbing. They are not neutral pipes that money happens to flow through. They are instruments of economic power.
Consider this: roughly four-fifths of Canada’s cross-border payments are routed through U.S. correspondent banks. The vast majority of global dollar clearing flows through New York. That means for every dollar a Canadian business sends abroad, we are, in many cases, dependent on infrastructure we do not own, cannot control, and pay a premium to use.
In a world of geopolitical uncertainty — and we are living in one — that dependency is a strategic vulnerability. It introduces cost. It introduces complexity. And it introduces risk that no Canadian business or government should have to accept as simply the cost of doing business.
Around the world, countries have recognised this and acted boldly. India’s Unified Payments Interface now processes over 12 billion transactions every month, dramatically reducing dependence on foreign card networks. Brazil’s Pix reached mass adoption in under two years, giving tens of millions of people access to instant, low-cost payments for the first time. Europe and the United Kingdom are strengthening domestic payment sovereignty through instant payment rails, new governance models, and clear rules for digital money.
The message from our peers is unambiguous: payments infrastructure is economic statecraft. The countries that build it, own it, and govern it well will hold a lasting competitive advantage. The countries that do not will remain dependent — paying others for the privilege of moving their own money.
Canada is choosing a different path. And the Real-Time Rail is the centrepiece of that choice.
A platform for prosperity in terms everyone can feel
I want to make this concrete, because this matters far beyond the walls of financial institutions.
Think about a small manufacturing business in Hamilton. Today, that business sends an invoice to a supplier in Calgary and waits two to three days for settlement. During that wait, working capital is frozen. The business cannot reinvest it, cannot pay down its line of credit, cannot take advantage of a time-sensitive opportunity. Multiply that friction across hundreds of thousands of Canadian businesses, and you are looking at billions of dollars locked in inefficiency every single day.
The Real-Time Rail changes that. Payments settle in seconds, around the clock, every day of the year. For that manufacturer in Hamilton, it means cash flow that moves at the speed of business — not the speed of batch processing built decades ago.
Think about a family in Brampton sending money home to parents in India. Today, that transfer costs several percentage points per transaction — money taken directly out of the pockets of working Canadians. Modern payment corridors, built on infrastructure like the Real-Time Rail, could reduce that cost to near one per cent. Across all Canada-to-India remittances alone, that difference keeps hundreds of millions of dollars in Canadian households every year. And the same efficiencies exist across corridors to Asia, Europe, and beyond.
Think about a senior in rural Saskatchewan waiting on a government benefit. Today, that payment may take days to arrive, may require a bank branch they have to drive an hour to reach, and may arrive without enough information to know what it’s for. Real-time infrastructure enables instant disbursements, with rich data embedded in every transaction, so Canadians get what they’re owed — when they need it, with full clarity.
These are not hypothetical use cases. They are the real possibilities that this infrastructure unlocks. The Real-Time Rail delivers instant, irrevocable payments, 24/7 availability, and data-rich ISO 20022 messaging, supported by centralized fraud detection capabilities built into the system from the ground up.
User-acceptance testing is complete. Integrated performance testing is underway. Launch is targeted for late Q4 — driven by readiness, not by haste, because the safety and soundness of this system is non-negotiable.
The safety imperative
We move more than 100 trillion dollars in value every year. More than 411 billion dollars on every single business day. Behind every one of those transactions is an unspoken promise: that the system will work, that value will move securely, and that Canadians can trust what happens to their money.
That trust is not free. It is earned — through strong governance, rigorous risk management, and the constant work of thousands of people across this ecosystem.
As we modernise, that obligation does not diminish. It grows.
Artificial intelligence is transforming decision-making at machine speed — raising the stakes for both defenders and attackers. Quantum computing, while still emerging, will fundamentally challenge the cryptographic assumptions our systems are built on. Fraud is becoming more sophisticated, more automated, and more targeted.
Our answer to these challenges is not to slow down innovation. It is to ensure that innovation and integrity move together — that every capability we unlock is matched with the governance and resilience to sustain public trust.
Strengthening Canada’s payment sovereignty does not mean turning inward. It means engaging globally from a position of strength — able to build direct settlement corridors, reduce unnecessary dependencies, and offer Canadian businesses and families real alternatives. That is what it means to treat payments as national infrastructure.
Canada can do big things
Jeremy Hansen spent 16 years training before he flew around the moon. When he came back, he did not talk about what he had achieved. He talked about what comes next.
“What we should do now,” he said, “is pat ourselves on the back for this accomplishment — because it’s extraordinary — but then ask: what’s next? What are we going to do next?”
I find that inspiring. Not just as a statement about space, but as a posture for Canada.
We have spent years building this infrastructure. More than 1,800 payment service providers have now applied for registration under the Bank of Canada’s supervisory framework. Access to core systems is broader than it has ever been. The foundation is real.
The question now is not whether Canada can build world-class payment infrastructure. We have. The question is what we choose to build on top of it.
That is the invitation in this room, today.
A thank you, and a call to action
None of this has happened in isolation. And before I close, I want to name that directly.
To Canada’s banks and credit unions: thank you. You have carried the operational weight of this transformation while continuing to serve tens of millions of Canadians every day. That dual responsibility is not small.
To our fintech and technology partners: thank you. You have pushed us to be more innovative, more open, and more ambitious about what this infrastructure can do.
To the Bank of Canada: thank you. Your stewardship of the supervisory framework and your partnership in building a system that is safe and resilient by design.
To the Department of Finance and the Minister of Finance: thank you. Thank you for recognizing, through the Spring Economic Update and the government’s broader agenda, that modern payment infrastructure is essential to Canada’s long-term productivity and prosperity.
And to the entire Payments Canada team and our ecosystem partners: thank you. This is hard work. It is complex, high-stakes, unglamorous work. And it matters enormously.
Now, to all of you, here is the call to action:
Build use cases that make Canadian businesses more productive and life genuinely easier for every person in this country. The infrastructure is here. Use it ambitiously.
Design inclusively so that every region, every community, every family that has been underserved by the financial system sees real benefit from this modernization.
And lead with trust. As innovation accelerates, as AI reshapes financial services, as new forms of digital value emerge — let Canada be the country that moves boldly and responsibly. Let our payment system be known for what Jeremy Hansen said Canadians should be known for: doing big things, together.
Tomorrow, I’ll be joined on stage by the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne. On the heels of the Spring Economic Update and the tabling of Financial Crimes Agency legislation, we’ll be discussing the government’s transformative agenda and the role of our critical national payment infrastructure for Canada’s long-term prosperity and economic growth. I hope you will join us.
Canada’s payment infrastructure is a strategic national asset. Let’s be worthy of it. Thank you.
Watch more content from the main stage of The 2026 Payments Canada SUMMIT.
