Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak before the committee.
My name is Todd Roberts. I'm the senior vice-president responsible for payments innovation and growth at CIBC. As well, the payments system, its regulation, and the factors that lead to innovation and success have been a significant part of my professional career.
I will focus my remarks this afternoon on observations that I hope the committee will find helpful regarding what has enabled the payment system to be effective, the need for sustained innovation to continue to evolve payments for Canadians, and some observations for consideration to guide the successful evolution of payments.
The Canadian payments ecosystem is one of the most advanced in the world. It is advanced in part because of the very effective relationships between industry players, as well as Canada's effective supervisory system. The players, pre-mobile, included consumers, merchants, card issuers, merchant acquirers, and the card networks.
In the world of mobile, one adds to this list our wireless telcos, new security software developers, trusted security managers such as G&D and EnStream, electronic wallet providers, and others who need to work in perfect harmony to ensure a seamless experience for merchants and consumers.
This view has been reinforced by a number of leading global organizations such as the World Bank, and industry players such as Visa and MasterCard. Compared to the United States, our system provides better security through pin and chip, and our readiness to deploy new technologies, such as mobile payments, is considerably more advanced. As a case in point, CIBC, along with its partners at Rogers and Telus, have deployed credit cards onto smartphones, whereas Isis, a consortium of various players in the U.S., still struggles today with its deployment.
Our ecosystem has been effective in large part due to the close collaboration between participants, the existence of clear standards and protocols governing payments, as well as very productive working relationships with regulators. The Canadian payment system works well for Canadians in our view, as it delivers on the core expectations of its users: trust, security, affordability, ubiquity, and efficiency.
While there can always be opportunities for improvement, we have built an ecosystem that we believe we can justly be proud of. My point here is that as we look to the future and evolve the ecosystem to embrace digital payments we need to ensure that new payment methods continue to develop effectively. Canadians expect that banks, networks, telcos, and other players will enable digital payments to be made through more methods than conventional plastic. They expect that payments can be made through tablets, smartphones, and an increasing array of connected devices. They will expect these devices to be as trusted and secure as traditional methods. They will also expect to be able to use these devices wherever traditional payment methods work. Also, they will expect that whether they deposit a cheque or take an image of it, it can be processed just as quickly and not cost them any more to do so. In short, Canadians will expect the new world of digital payments to deliver on the core requirements that the current system currently delivers for them.
To that end, we believe the payments ecosystem will need to evolve in a manner that continues to facilitate innovation while ensuring a robust and secure environment for payments. With that in mind, we'd submit the following perspectives for considerations.
Partnerships between banks, networks, telcos, technology providers, and other organizations will need to be encouraged to ensure that solutions designed for Canada continue to thrive. Common standards and protocols will need to be put in place to enable digital payments, as well as digital identification, to remain secure, trusted, and efficient. Clear minimum operational expectations around elements such as security, privacy, and anti-money laundering will be required, which apply commonly across all participants who provide payment services, to ensure that Canadians are protected similarly when they make a traditional or digital payment.