Finance committee  That's basically just the Interac total.

Finance committee  About $153 million, as a percentage of bank revenues, would be some very small fraction of 1%.

Finance committee  Thank you. If I may, there's been a lot of discussion about whether regulation or competition is the best. In Canada, we have the number one access to ABMs per capita in the world. I would suggest that what that has resulted from is the competition we have in the marketplace. We have banks, we have non-banks, and we have non-financial institutions all participating in this ABM network.

Finance committee  To the best of our knowledge, the banks do not own white labels at this point in time.

Finance committee  Well, of course, the banks and white labels are competing for space in all sorts of different retail outlets in terms of where they are going to put their ABMs to serve customers--

Finance committee  Well, the banks are looking to have service both on their own premises and off premises as well, so in terms of whether we are privy to all of their exclusive contracts, no, not at all.

Finance committee  As we said and outlined in our paper, we have a system in Canada where ABMs are one of many options that you can use to access your funds, where you can pay for goods and services. It's part of the network that is offered to clients in terms of online banking, telephone banking, ABMs branch availability, and so on.

Finance committee  Actually, the banks don't make a profit on that money. While the money is in transit, it's in a suspense account. It's not interest bearing, but the incentive to work—

Finance committee  On credit cards themselves, credit cards in Canada are partly a credit tool, of course, but most customers actually use them as a payment option. The vast majority of customers in Canada don't actually pay any interest whatsoever because they pay off their balances in full each and every month.

Finance committee  What I would say is that there is an incentive for the banks and all financial institutions to ensure that there is an incredibly efficient, but also safe and secure system. We need to bear that in mind. Canada's payment system is unparalleled. It's one of the best in the world in terms of efficiency.

Finance committee  In terms of how the system works, there were questions about why it takes time, where the money is, and so on. As Terry mentioned, it is a very sophisticated system. Your financial institution will take in all of the cheques that is has that day and process them that night. The cheques go to a processing centre, are sorted by financial institution, and so on.

Finance committee  It's an incredible thing to see. What happens is that the cheques have to both clear, which is the process of netting out the amounts that all financial institutions owe each other, and then settle, where the institutions pay each other the difference. When the money is going from the financial institution where you have paid your bill to the financial institution of the biller, that's the process of settling and clearing.

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely.

Finance committee  No, it operates to bring functionality to the system by connecting the systems together.

Finance committee  The Interac Association does operate independently and they have members that are financial institutions. But it's also interesting to remember in terms of how the system actually works. If you go to your own bank and you withdraw cash from an ABM from your own bank, they are not connecting to a broader network.