Canada Elevates Payments Infrastructure Security to Top National Priority
Prime Minister Mark Carney has placed the security of Canada's payments system alongside defence and critical minerals as a top national priority, driven by heavy reliance on U.S. networks and recent infrastructure vulnerabilities.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has elevated the security of Canada’s payments system to his top priorities, placing it alongside defence and critical minerals. The move is part of Ottawa’s new national security strategy, which highlights eight areas where Canada seeks to increase its "strategic autonomy." 
The prioritization reflects Canada’s heavy dependence on U.S. giants Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., as well as U.S. banks, for parts of its payments infrastructure and cross-border transactions. Visa and Mastercard account for approximately 96 per cent of Canadian credit card volume, while about 90 per cent of Canadian mobile payments move through wallets operated by three U.S. platforms.
Concerns regarding data sovereignty and financial security risks intensified after Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal sold Canadian payment processor Moneris Solutions Corp. to a U.S. private equity firm for $2-billion in August. Experts warn against over-reliance on foreign operators for credit and cross-border transactions, noting the potential debilitating impact on the economy if payments systems were to come to a standstill.
Vulnerabilities in domestic infrastructure have also shaped federal policy. A nationwide service outage at Rogers Communications Inc. in July 2022 lasted 26 hours and knocked out the Interac debit and e-transfer systems, disrupting payments across much of the country. In response to the 2022 outage, Interac added a second network provider and a "third link" to reroute user traffic if other systems failed. Canada’s primary retail payments and debit network operator, Interac, remains domestically owned by a group of banks, credit unions, caisses populaires, and payment acquirers.
To enhance economic sovereignty and reduce friction in the movement of value to improve trade, the federal government unveiled plans to work toward connecting Canada and the European Union’s instant payment systems. This initiative aims to allow faster and lower-cost money transfers. The push for expanded redundancy and strategic autonomy marks an increased focus on economic security in federal policy, rather than isolation from international networks.