Sept-Oct 2018 Issue

By Derek Wood For many finance leaders “blockchain” and “cryptocurrency” are some of the latest buzzwords floating around. However, new research1 reveals that it might be time we get more familiar with them; 50 per cent of Canadian finance leaders surveyed by Robert Half Finance & Accounting say that cryptocurrency …

By Wally Vogel With all the hype surrounding blockchain, and a short track record of practical business applications to date, it may be tempting to wait and see what others do, or perhaps even ignore it and hope it goes away. That was the approach Blockbuster took to streaming video …

By Jonathan Razi A century ago engineers in Chicago, Illinois reversed the flow of the city’s main river to redirect billions of gallons of water away from nearby Lake Michigan. Today in Chicago, my company is working to reverse a similarly powerful trend: the rising cost of credit card acceptance …

By Normand Provost The payments landscape across North America has transformed beyond recognition in recent years. The contactless revolution, for example, is in full swing. The volume of contactless payments in Canada alone increased by 37 per cent in the first quarter of 2018, compared to the same quarter in …

By Jason Oxman The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is a leading payments technology trade association representing more than 500 global companies. Our mission is to grow the payments industry and we serve our member companies in a variety of ways. One of our most important roles is as leader in …

Understanding Canada/U.S. differences By Jeff Hempker When people hear that Canada didn’t roll out its cheque truncation system i.e. converting physical cheques into electronic cheques until 2014 many will say: “They must be 10 years behind the United States,” since the U.S. started its system in 2004. Actually, the opposite …

By Jason T. Schwabline Cheques and modern payments? Two terms that are normally not presented cohesively together. But as consumers’ behaviours move into a more digital payments realm, cheques and the ecosystem that support them have become more relevant than ever. While consumer use of cheques has leveled out, the …

By Michael Rhodes Thanks to technology companies we have new ways to communicate, buy the things we want —and sell what we don’t—to get around and have all our favourite music in our pocket. We can count on these businesses for hyper-personalization and to create new algorithms to power their …

By Derek Colfer As consumers shift away from cash and towards digital and mobile payments, financial institutions and payments technology providers are exploring new ways to make those transactions faster, easier and frictionless. The next frontier in that evolution will be artificial intelligence (AI). AI is a computer science that …

By John Armstrong To say that Canada’s payments modernization plans or “Canadian Payments 2.0” are ambitious would be an understatement. With plans for real-time payments, data-rich transactions, more efficient standards and open-banking platforms, these initiatives will revolutionize how Canadians transact: much to the benefit of businesses and consumers alike. These …