Finance committee  I can't give you a specific date, but I can tell you that we will start offering the smart card in 2008. It is anticipated that that technology will be established around 2010. One can imagine that the digital wallet will become a reality or at least a technological possibility w

Finance committee  It will be gradual. We'll start with the smart card, and the deployment will start next year.

Finance committee  We often forget that ABMs are used for things other than cash withdrawals: they're also used for deposits and transfers, and they will continue to be used for those purposes. The digital wallet cannot do those things, but it will reduce the number of cash withdrawal transactions

Finance committee  As a matter of fact, ABMs are used just as much for deposits. Right now, the debit cards are used to withdraw cash. We must not jump to conclusions on that.

Finance committee  As I've just explained, we're facing a very different kind of competition. Desjardins, which has a dominant position in Quebec, would continue to charge these fees and would not have to react by increasing other fees.

Finance committee  I don't think that would be acceptable to our shareholders. Let me remind you that our clients would also tend to become Desjardins clients or use its services because they could then use our system for free. That would really put us in a very unfavourable competitive position.

Finance committee  From our standpoint, it's very important. I explained that very clearly in my brief statement. If we face competition from a network that is not regulated by the federal government and that manages four times more ABMs than we do, and if we did not impose these fees but the other

Finance committee  That's not what I said. In fact, I did not say that we wanted to disclose the costs per transaction, which is a much more precious and fundamental piece of data in terms of competition. I simply wanted to say how far we were prepared to go, by explaining clearly that the total di

Finance committee  That's not true only of ABMs. It would be the same for all our activities: we don't disclose our costs as a general rule.

Finance committee  Indeed, we're trying to be as transparent as possible, but this is not always easy because we're talking about a marginal cost, the average cost, and it's not easy to identify that cost. It depends on the type of ABM, or the type of transaction. However, we did take some action.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Honourable members, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today. The main focus of my comments will be ABM convenience fees within the specific context of Quebec. While National Bank is Quebec's leading bank, we have a more limited reach else