I can compare it to Brazilian Pix. I use both extensively.

INTERAC is like the beta version of Pix (which is basically the same as the Indian system in the article).

Pix works via email, CPF (a person's "SIN" number, which isn't secret in Brazil), randomly generated key, telephone number, QR codes. INTERAC is mostly email.

Pix works immediately. Some transactions take 1 second or less to credit on the other bank (you can see that when you are trying to send money to yourself, when the destination bank gives you a notification that it received the money before the UI of the sending bank has even acknowledged that the operation is completed). INTERAC sometime takes several minutes, up to 30 minutes sometimes in my experience.

Personally I think INTERAC is about 70% of the way there, but I would chose PIX every time simply because it seems like a much better iteration.

With Pix, you get credited and debited immediately. With INTERAC, I've noticed that sometimes you can be debited immediately and the credit takes longer, and vice versa. Sometimes for several minutes, your money can "double" (appear in second account without disappearing from the first one) or "disappear" (leave the first account but not get credited on the second one).

This last point might not seem like much, but it gets in the way of using for a lot of things that would need to be immediate (paying for a Taxi, or a supermarket purchase). Since Pix is instantaneous, it is used heavily for those kind of payments where you don't want to wait.

For all of Canada's chartered banking bureaucracy and lack of customer empathy ... I have to say that our e-transfer system is pretty amazing. For business or personal, one-off or regular transfers. It just works.

I do find it funny that to deposit an e-transfer in Canada you get an email, are required to click a link in that email and then login to your internet banking with your username and password.

Straight out of the "NEVER EVER do that" playbook.

Well "required" is not exactly right. You can accept funds manually that way if you prefer. But if you set your account up once to auto receive and deposit then any funds anyone transfers to your email address will just appear in your account. This is done once in your online banking setup and after that there is no clicking of links or logging in or passwords necessary.

Is there a reason to not configure it this way? I've always set things up this way, with the three banks I deal with, and can't think of any obvious ways I could get burned or fooled.

I always have an awkward delay with interac transfers when doing in-person. like "so, what do you think of those jays" bla bla for several minutes. Works great when the transaction is not 100% live though.

If the e-transfer involves a credit union it can take much longer than several minutes at least that is the case in the rural area where I live.

Ha. Interesting. I do a lot of e-transfers but I don't think I've ever needed instant, on-the-spot confirmation so I've never noticed that! Noted!

I've never done it, but you can also use a phone number which sends a text message link.

“Aliases” is the term of art when determining if an instant payment systems supports using a phone number, emails, etc for mapping to an underlying account.

ok

Figured it would be helpful for folks researching and comparing other instant payment systems. Makes the googling and keyword search on a page easier.

(Work at a FinTech integrating with FedNow, exciting stuff imho)