Evidence of meeting #21 for Finance in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was card.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Darren Hannah  Acting Vice-President, Policy and Operations, Canadian Bankers Association
Lucie M.A. Tedesco  Commissioner, Executive Services, Financial Consumer Agency of Canada
David Wilkes  Senior Vice-President, Grocery Division and Government Relations, Retail Council of Canada
Corinne Pohlmann  Senior Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
Hugh Cumming  Executive Vice-President, Technology and Operations, SecureKey Technologies Inc.

3:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative James Rajotte

I call this meeting to order. This is meeting 21 of the Standing Committee on Finance.

Our orders of the day, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), are for a study of emerging digital payment systems.

I want to welcome our guests here this afternoon. We're very pleased to have five presenters here this afternoon.

From the Canadian Bankers Association we have the vice-president, Mr. Darren Hannah. Welcome.

From the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada we have the commissioner, in her first appearance as commissioner before the committee, Ms. Lucie Tedesco. Welcome.

From the Retail Council of Canada we have Mr. David Wilkes, senior VP. Welcome to you as well.

From the Canadian Federation of Independent Business we have Ms. Corinne Pohlmann, the senior vice-president for national affairs.

From SecureKey Technologies Inc., we have the executive VP, Mr. Hugh Cumming. Thank you so much for being with us.

You each have five minutes for an opening statement, and then we'll have questions from members. We'll proceed in the order given, and we'll start with Mr. Hannah, please.

3:30 p.m.

Darren Hannah Acting Vice-President, Policy and Operations, Canadian Bankers Association

Mr. Chair, I'm very pleased to be here today representing the Canadian Bankers Association and our 60 members, which include domestic banks, foreign bank subsidiaries, and foreign bank branches operating in Canada. I welcome the opportunity to speak about emerging digital payments systems in Canada and to highlight the banking industry's work in this area and what we see as some of the key public policy considerations for decision-makers.

There is no question that the payments ecosystem is experiencing a surge of innovation in Canada and around the world. Innovation is especially evident in the area of retail payments, with the proliferation of web-based payment technologies and near-field communication, or NFC, applications.

In Canada banks are at the forefront of creating a modern and efficient payments experience for consumers and merchants. The principal innovation in retail payments since 2010 has been the wide rollout of NFC technology to facilitate contactless credit card and debit card transactions at the point of sale. The rollout has been among the most extensive in the world. Approximately 10% of all credit card transactions are now done through NFC.

With the recent data showing that more than half of Canadians own a smartphone, we see further opportunity for growth in mobile wallets and mobile payments, offering Canadians an additional choice that is efficient, secure, and convenient.

To facilitate the adoption of mobile payments in Canada for the benefit of consumers and businesses, Canadian banks and credit unions worked together to develop the Canadian NFC mobile payments reference model, which is a set of agreed-upon principles for mobile payments. Several mobile wallets have been launched by banks using this model.

Among other things, the model specifies the need for, first, data security, which is the essential foundation for any payments system and product, and second, consumer control over what type of payment they use and how they access it. The model is also built around the use of existing technologies, such as contactless payment terminals. This will provide merchants with a seamless opportunity to take advantage of these technologies using the systems that are already in place for debit and credit card acceptance.

The payments ecosystem involves the coordination of many parties to function effectively. It's our objective that providing early clarity on the design of systems that enable mobile payments will help build efficiencies into the future deployment of those systems in Canada.

Innovation in the payments system must be encouraged, but not without sufficient safeguards to ensure the safety of consumers and the stability of the current payments system. As this committee knows, rapid growth and innovation in digital payments has resulted in a much more fractured payments market, with new entrants and competitors offering novel payment solutions that are attractive to consumers. The emergence of this shadow payments system presents a variety of risks to Canadian consumers and to the security of the payments system, particularly in the context of consumer protection, consumer disclosure, data protection, and system stability.

This is especially evident in e-commerce and online payments, for which consumers can store their credit card and debit card credentials in digital wallets or load funds into online accounts for subsequent payments. Many of these solutions leverage existing payment clearing and settlement systems and credit card networks in the exchange of funds and payments data.

The banking industry has undertaken some analysis of these issues with a view to understanding their impacts and what is needed to address them, thereby encouraging debate and discussion.

As a result of this, we've come to a view that there is a strong case for implementing regulatory measures for shadow payments systems that would achieve three main objectives. One, it would ensure that consumers are properly informed about the payments services being offered. Two, payments service providers would be held to prudential and operational standards and thresholds to minimize the likelihood of a service provider causing harm to consumers and others in the payments system. Three, consumers would have access to some form of recourse should there be a failure to deliver the payments services as agreed.

The banking industry is proud to be an integral part of the evolution of Canada's strong payments system. Banks support an open, competitive, and innovative digital payments system that promotes consumer confidence and focuses on the safety and soundness of the broader payments system.

I look forward to your questions.

3:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative James Rajotte

Thank you very much, Mr. Hannah, for your presentation.

We'll hear now from Ms. Tedesco, please.

3:35 p.m.

Lucie M.A. Tedesco Commissioner, Executive Services, Financial Consumer Agency of Canada

Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada to participate in this interesting and important discussion.

Your interest in studying digital payments is most welcome and timely to those of us who work on financial consumer issues.

Before I describe our research into this emerging area, I would like to give you a brief overview of our agency. The federal government created the FCAC in 2001 to provide financial information to consumers and to oversee the market conduct of banks and other federally regulated financial institutions.

Since then, our mandate has expanded to include responsibility for advancing Canadians' financial literacy.

In addition, we were recently given the mandate of conducting research to monitor and evaluate emerging trends and issues that may impact consumers of financial products and services.

Last December we released a research report entitled, “Mobile Payments and Consumer Protection in Canada”. This report explores the emerging technology of mobile payments and assesses the extent to which financial consumers in Canada are protected in using them. For your perusal, you have been provided with the report's executive summary, which includes a link to the report in its entirety.

Mobile payment is made with a smartphone or another mobile device instead of a more traditional payment method, such as cash, credit, or debit. Many of the current and future offerings will allow consumers to use credit and debit cards as a source of funds for their mobile payments. This topic is of particular interest to us, considering that Canadian consumers and the Canadian market are recognized internationally as being well positioned for the successful adoption of mobile payments.

Our report concludes that while mobile payments offer great conveniences and benefits, they also pose potential risks to consumers.

Currently, consumer protection obligations vary based on the underlying source of funds, as well as the type of service provider offering the m-payment service, and that applies to disclosure, dispute resolution and redress mechanisms, and protection against fraud and misuse of assets.

There are also emerging consumer protection risks, including that malware and other malicious software may present risks of identity theft and fraud. In addition, mobile service providers may sell their user data to third parties, who may use this data to target advertise—this practice is known as profiling—based on behavioural and geographical information.

One of the associated risks here is that there is a potential to market harmful products to vulnerable consumers, including children. As a result, there is a need for educational materials to help consumers learn more about mobile payments, not only to inform their decision-making but also to provide them with measures that they can take to minimize their exposure to risk. FCAC is currently developing such materials, which should be available on its website later this spring.

Our research also identified some lessons learned from jurisdictions that have high rates of user adoption. For instance, the number of stakeholders involved in mobile payment transactions may increase the level of confusion and complexity related to dispute resolution and redress. This has been identified as yet another potential risk to consumers.

In response, jurisdictions such as South Korea have enacted legislation that attributes ultimate responsibility to the financial institution for handling dispute and redress, regardless of which service provider is responsible for the error. For its part, the OECD is promoting the creation of minimum protection standards to be applied uniformly across mobile payment systems.

It will be important to monitor the business practices of suppliers to understand whether, and to what degree, the uneven consumer protection framework is problematic for consumers.

FCAC will continue to monitor the evolution of these payments and will encourage Canadians to learn more about their rights and responsibilities when they are making mobile payments through the information that we will make available to them.

Thank you. I look forward to answering any questions you may have on the subject.

3:40 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative James Rajotte

Ms. Tedesco, thank you for your presentation.

Next will be Mr. Wilkes, please, from the Retail Council of Canada.

3:40 p.m.

David Wilkes Senior Vice-President, Grocery Division and Government Relations, Retail Council of Canada

Good afternoon, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to present to you and your committee today.

As many of you will know, the RCC's, Retail Council of Canada's members are small and large businesses across the country and represent more than 45,000 storefronts of all retail formats, including general merchandise, grocery, specialty retail, independent stores, and online merchants.

The payments landscape has been a major area of focus for RCC for many years. In that regard we applaud the government's efforts to ensure that retailers and their customers have choice in the payment methods accepted in their stores, and we applaud the recent commitment to lower costs associated with payment acceptance that was announced in the recent budget.

With respect to mobile payments, I would like to outline some key areas of concern to the retail community, in particular, operation complexity, the cost of implementation, consumer and merchant choice, and expressed acceptance or consent.

First, let me deal with operational complexity. We are witnessing many trials and tests, but little is being done to ensure collaboration of all stakeholders in the payment supply chain and there is very little discussion about industry-wide standardization. In the short term we believe the technology is likely to diverge before it converges, and this lack of standardization could make the emergence of mobile payments messy for the consumer and inefficient for retailers.

To address this issue, RCC recommends that the government be tasked with ensuring that a standardized platform be defined for mobile applications in Canada.

Second, I will discuss cost. As retailers we have a responsibility to roll out and support technology that makes lives more convenient in a way that does not add additional unnecessary cost into the system. Containment of cost is vital for both consumer prices and retailers' bottom lines.

All payments must be treated the same regardless of the form in which they are made, whether it is by a plastic card or a mobile smartphone. Simply changing the form, in our opinion, cannot be a reason for increasing costs.

Let me give you a specific example. Let's take the card-present versus card-not-present situation. In a traditional payment, the consumer's credit card is either present at the point of sale, or it is not present, as in the case of online shopping in which you key in the number, or in telephone shopping or mail ordering. In the card-not-present case, retailers pay a higher cost to the credit card networks because of the potential for increased fraud and inconvenience for the processor.

Those situations don't exist in a mobile environment, and we really encourage the government to take a strong look. We recommend that mobile payments be treated as a card-present application rather than a card-not-present one. RCC asks the committee to recommend that mobile payments be treated in this way and that this be reflected in an updated payments code of conduct.

The final two areas I'll talk about are consumer and merchant choice.

Regarding consumer choice, it is our view that consumers should be given a range of payment options at the point of sale, regardless of whether they're using a physical or a mobile wallet. RCC strongly believes that networks, issuers, or processors should not set default settings for payments. The only party who should make that choice is the consumer. Again, we encourage the committee to recommend that these options must be set by consumers and that this be reflected in an updated code of conduct.

Not only is it vital that consumers be provided choice when considering mobile payment options, but so also should merchants be. Our final recommendation, Mr. Chair, is that retailers must have the ability to decide to accept mobile payments and that their acceptance not be implied or deemed simply because the retailer is accepting another form of payment, such as the tap and go form. The responsibility to decide whether to accept any form of payment, including mobile, must rest solely with the retailer, and this condition, requirement, or right must be reflected in updates to the payments code of conduct.

I too thank you for the opportunity to address the committee. I also look forward to your questions and the discussion on what is a vital topic for the retail industry.

3:45 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative James Rajotte

Thank you very much, Mr. Wilkes.

We'll now go to Ms. Pohlmann, from CFIB, please.

3:45 p.m.

Corinne Pohlmann Senior Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business

As you may know, CFIB is a not-for-profit non-partisan organization representing more than 109,000 small and medium-size independent businesses across Canada. I will be walking you through a slide deck that I hope you have in front of you.

There's no doubt that payment systems, especially credit card-specific payments, have been a touchy subject for merchants of all sizes, but especially for smaller merchants, who often feel powerless against large payment networks because they feel they have little choice but to accept the terms of payment and technology imposed on them.

While they always have the option of not accepting credit cards, this is very difficult for some sectors, such as retail and hospitality, which could simply not operate without providing their customers with the option of paying by credit or debit, as you see on slide 2.

On slide 2 you can also see that cheques remain the top form of payments among all types of small and medium-size businesses. In fact, Canada has been slow in adopting e-invoicing and payment solutions, particularly at the business-to-business level.

The good news is that most entrepreneurs see the benefits of moving to electronic forms of invoicing, payment, and acceptance but have limited options that are user friendly and affordable. Our hope is that some of these emerging digital solutions will start to address this gap in the Canadian payments market.

As you'll see on slide 3, despite the abundance of businesses accepting credit cards, if given a choice of which payment type to accept, very few even among those in the retail and hospitality sectors would choose to accept credit cards, citing the cost as the biggest factor in that decision.

We welcomed the credit and debit card code of conduct in 2010, as it served to save low-cost in-store debit in Canada and provided merchants with a small degree of power in their dealings with the industry, but with all kinds of emerging digital technologies now entering the market, the code must be updated to address them.

Digital payments may offer some advantages to merchants and customers; they also hold the potential to create significant problems and drive up costs. There will soon be many more competitors in the market, including many non-traditional players, each with their own system and fee structure. The result may be additional confusion, complexity, and lack of clarity, especially for smaller merchants trying to balance consumer demand with their own cost to process those payments.

Unfortunately, the hasty and unfair introduction of premium credit cards in Canada served to reduce the trust Canadian merchants have in their payments industry. More recent merchant fee increases and plans to add another level of premium cards into the Canadian market have only added to the growing mistrust. As a result, small firms struggle to believe that the introduction of digital payments will not usher in significantly higher fees following an initial introductory period.

This skepticism is apparent in slide 5, where merchants are asked to rate the current fees associated with each type of credit card. Most feel that Interac debit fees are fair or good, and a majority also find that fees associated with regular credit cards are at least fair, underlining that many merchants accept that there should be a cost associated with the service.

It is in regard to premium credit cards that most are stating that fees are poor, because from a merchant's perspective, there is little additional value for the extra fees they are paying to accept them.

Even more concerning is a lack of transparency. As you can see on slide 6, almost three-quarters of respondents said that it was somewhat or very difficult to understand their credit card fees. Our concern is that this will only become more complex when adding digital payments.

While we understand that currently there is no difference between the fees associated with digital payments and current credit card rates, we find it hard to believe that this scenario will be maintained in the long run, for the simple reason that additional players, such as telecommunication companies, are now involved. As you can imagine, the level of trust that small businesses have for major telecom companies is not much better than it is for credit card companies. Bringing these two industries together does not give small business much comfort that their costs will not increase in the future.

One solution is to quickly update the credit card code of conduct to include new provisions that allow some power to merchants when it comes to emerging digital technologies. We were pleased to hear reference in both the throne speech and the recent budget to making further changes to the code to improve fairness and transparency and help lower credit card acceptance costs for merchants.

These code improvements must include provisions that require payment networks to obtain express written consent for each digital product they put out, even if it is at the same fee as other forms of payment. We understand that industry players will not want to go back to merchants each time a new technology, a new payment option, or a new feature of a wallet is introduced. However, merchants have very few powers other than the ability to choose the payment options they offer. That is why express written consent is absolutely vital to ensure that there is a degree of fairness in the system.

CFIB believes that there are only two parties in making a transaction: the merchant and the consumer. Only merchants should be able to decide which forms of payment they wish to offer, and only consumers should be able to decide by which method they will pay. All payment methods, apps, and technologies should be set to respect the wishes of these two parties, and default settings should not be allowed.

With the proliferation of new players who will enter the payments market, including telecommunications and technology companies, ensuring that the code effectively covers all these players is essential.

A formal and accessible dispute resolution process must be implemented. The current mandate of the FCAC allows it to review complaints for information only and does not provide advice or relief to small business owners. A proper dispute mechanism should have the power to require resolution to specific problems.

Finally, as I mentioned, there is a gap in the Canadian payments market around B to B, business-to-business, transactions and somewhat around business-to-government and government-to-business transactions for smaller businesses. We would encourage emerging digital payment technologies to start filling that gap with potential solutions that are affordable, accessible, transparent, user friendly, and secure, and that allow tracking for record keeping.

Thank you.

3:50 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative James Rajotte

Thank you very much for your presentation, Ms. Pohlmann.

We'll now hear from Mr. Cumming from SecureKey Technologies.

3:50 p.m.

Hugh Cumming Executive Vice-President, Technology and Operations, SecureKey Technologies Inc.

Thank you very much, everyone.

I'll speak briefly about SecureKey. We provide authentication and identity solutions in working with banks and governments. I have a brief PowerPoint presentation to give us some perspective on the future of digital commerce.

First of all, I'd like to start with the challenge. Consumers must identify themselves today on every channel in order to achieve continuity in the experience online. Whether mobile or web, the identity challenge is even greater. Merchants must ask users to create a new user name, password, or other token to make repeat visits easier to grow their relationships. This creates separate log-in passwords for each retailer and creates frustration and abandonment risk.

Unlike in the physical world where one credential or a credit or debit card works at multiple retailers, each online site has a dedicated approach. If online and in-store experiences are to converge, users must be able to replicate the one credential to many retailer relations. In short, consumers need to be able to bring their own credentials. We call this BYOC. Our challenge is to ultimately enable consumers to visit their favourite retailers using credentials that they remember and trust.

Online approaches today are being done in silos and are handled by each organization differently across channels, creating different experiences and outcomes, forcing users to create new passwords at each site and to download new mobile apps. Passwords get reused from site to site, so when Joe's Flowers gets hacked, we hear in the news that it was Facebook, but in reality it was the weaker site that allowed the password to be compromised.

The PCI has set standards on payment-card data, but has not created interoperability in allowing merchants to exchange data. The experience and degree of data protection varies with each implementation and is a card-centric experience rather than a user-centric experience. These silos result in gaps that have exposed consumers to social engineering and other threats, resulting in fraud and other losses.

Cross-channel credentials require a crisp identity. Consumers expect consistent experiences. A converged approach to digital identity where consumers can use their credentials across channels and organizational boundaries eliminates friction and fraud. What if I could use my TD credential at Canadian Tire or my Shoppers Drug Mart log-in at Costco? What if I could do this without losing the ability to share attributes in my control and without limiting my ability to have a relationship with those organizations that I choose?

An example of this in action is the work that SecureKey is doing in Canada. Consumers are using their existing bank and telco credentials to access over a hundred government applications. It is a user-centric experience that enforces strong authentication while enforcing blinding properties to prevent leakage of privacy information. In Canada alone over a million people use this system today. It's a great proof-point that this idea of bringing your own credential is appealing to consumers.

Let's talk about how this transition to a user-centric approach can be applied to payments. The old-world approach was effectively a walled garden. The credit card was dominant. The data ran over the credit card's network. Every participant—the bank, the merchant, the acquirer—participated according to rules governed and controlled by the credit card industry. Now we're moving away from homogenous dedicated networks toward a great diversity of networks and ecosystem participants.

Payments now travel through many parties on shared networks. Digital and mobile wallets are proliferating. Bell, Rogers, Telus, RBC, TD, and CIBC have recently announced mobile payment strategies. Each is using different approaches, different technologies, and different approaches to security and risk. In addition, the online world has brought together new competitors that have capitalized on the disruption. Over 120 million people today use PayPal for online checkout. Amazon is the world's largest e-tailer, with over 100 million users.

A lack of standards has resulted in many high-profile breaches, most notably in the U.S. due to scale, exposing tens of millions of credit cardholders to fraudsters. The market needs a better standard for consumer data security. In shifting away from individual merchant-owned repositories and providing an on-demand framework for merchants to access consumer data from trusted sources—banks, issuers, digital wallets, or identity attributes—an open-identity ecosystem is the foundation.

Governments can help by paving the way to clarify rules of engagement surrounding an online equivalent to the know your customer practices used by banks, creating the open-identity and payment ecosystem where users are centric to the model, enabling how they authenticate, what happens to attributes, which devices they use, and creating auditability and traceability.

Just as the Internet was disruptive to payment brands, the smartphone is disruptive to the payment process. The smartphone enables a new model that is user-centric.

This model enables extensible trust networks that let users mix and match between authentication credentials and payment brands. Strong and open authentication standards take advantage of mobile devices and secure hardware and dedicated channels for the consumer. Privacy is a core component. The user has control over when and what data is shared.

In short, what this amounts to for consumers is agency. Instead of being a passive consumer of the technology, they are an active participant in the next payment network.

Finally, here are some of the things that we believe are required for a success in evolving payments technologies: user choice and convenience supporting multiple channels and converged approaches; thinking about online, in-store, and person-to-person payments as a single way of communicating; being conscious about the trend of bring your own device involving the consumer at the root of consumer identity; open standards; security; privacy; industry mandate for broad acceptance; and a supportive framework for regulation.

Thank you.

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative James Rajotte

Thank you very much, Mr. Cumming, for your presentation.

We'll begin members' rounds. These are five-minute rounds.

Monsieur Thibeault, s'il vous plaît .

3:55 p.m.

NDP

Glenn Thibeault NDP Sudbury, ON

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. With only five minutes, I'll get right into it. If I cut you off, I do apologize ahead of time. I have only a short amount of time to get a lot of questions in.

I'd like to start with you, Ms. Tedesco. It's in relation to a comment that was made at last Tuesday's meeting by Professor Jacques St-Amant. He stated that the voluntary code of conduct for credit and debit is not legally enforceable.

Given that the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada is responsible for administering the voluntary code, do you agree with this analysis? How does the FCAC monitor breaches of the code?

3:55 p.m.

Commissioner, Executive Services, Financial Consumer Agency of Canada

Lucie M.A. Tedesco

In terms of our supervisory role at the FCAC, we typically supervise according to the legislation and to the voluntary codes of conducts that are entered into by the industry. In terms of the credit and debit code, all of the payment card network operators are signatory to this code and agree to abide by the code. We monitor compliance with this code.

In the event that we find some issues in terms of their compliance with the code, then we report those breaches of compliance to the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Finance then has the opportunity to decide what he will do. If he finds that the problems are too prevalent, he can regulate at that point.

4 p.m.

NDP

Glenn Thibeault NDP Sudbury, ON

There are no fines that you can levy. There are no—

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Executive Services, Financial Consumer Agency of Canada

Lucie M.A. Tedesco

Not under the codes of conduct.

4 p.m.

NDP

Glenn Thibeault NDP Sudbury, ON

Okay.

We have other member organizations, such as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, asking that the voluntary code become mandatory, or things along those lines. Have you thought about whether, if this were mandatory, there would be fines involved, or things along those lines?

Have you found any instances of the code being breached at the moment or over the last little while? If so, are you able to share some of those details with the committee?

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Executive Services, Financial Consumer Agency of Canada

Lucie M.A. Tedesco

I won't go into specifics here, but I'd be pleased to provide some specifics. Certainly with the new code of conduct, these were organizations that were not supervised previously, so this has been quite a learning experience for them. By and large, however, the level of adherence to the code is very high. If any breaches are found, they are very quickly rectified.

We've found that the industry has been very open to being supervised by the FCAC and has acted quickly in terms of remedying some of the breaches if there have been some.

4 p.m.

NDP

Glenn Thibeault NDP Sudbury, ON

Thank you.

Ms. Pohlmann, in relation to the Competition Tribunal's decision this summer relating to some of the anti-competitive practices of the credit card companies, what was CFIB's reaction to the decision to punt it back to Parliament?

4 p.m.

Senior Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business

Corinne Pohlmann

We were disappointed. we had hoped to see some resolution to those issues. While the Competition Tribunal decided that there was something to this effect, they decided that they were not the body to actually deal with it, that it should go back to the government.

We've been working hard on trying to convince the government to make additions to the code of conduct and update it to include things like allowing...or to just getting rid of honour all cards rules, even allowing some limited surcharging, not beyond, of course, what the merchants themselves pay to accept credit cards.

4 p.m.

NDP

Glenn Thibeault NDP Sudbury, ON

Thank you.

It is good news to hear that the government may be acting on this.

There was some language in the budget, so I think that is exciting for everyone around this table.

Also, were there some serious concerns relating to co-badging? I don't want to get into what co-badging is—we understand it—but were there some concerns with co-badging?

4 p.m.

Senior Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business

Corinne Pohlmann

Certainly, we want to make sure that we don't see Interac, debit, and Visa, for example, on the same debit card, unless there's a distinctiveness such that one is not going to take over from the other one. We want to make sure that this stays strictly separate in terms of allowing.... We have no problem with Visa or MasterCard getting into other lines, such as mobile or debit, but we want to make sure that they do it on their own terms, with their own cards, or mobile payments or whatever, and not on the backs of other entities within Canada.

4 p.m.

NDP

Glenn Thibeault NDP Sudbury, ON

Thank you.

4 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative James Rajotte

Thank you very much, Mr. Thibeault.

We'll go to Mr. Saxton, please.

4 p.m.

Conservative

Andrew Saxton Conservative North Vancouver, BC

Thanks to our witnesses for being here today.

The advancement of mobile payments technology and usage seems to be a win-win-win situation. You have the payment networks which have less paperwork. They're using less paper and they also have less administration as a result. You have merchants who also have less paperwork, less paper usage, and less administration. Then you have the consumers who have greater convenience and ease of payment.

My question is for the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. Who stands to benefit most from this new technology in mobile payments?

4 p.m.

Commissioner, Executive Services, Financial Consumer Agency of Canada

Lucie M.A. Tedesco

Well, as a consumer, I can say that this is certainly convenient for consumers, and it can arguably be convenient for merchants, but with all those benefits and conveniences come risks. In our research paper, we've identified six key risks that can arise out of the use of mobile payments and going to mobile technology.