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The only reason I'm paying with a credit card is because it costs me money to pay with my debit card using Interac. You get a limited number of transactions per month and you get nothing in return.
With Mastercard/Visa, whenever I pay for something I get bonus points that I can use to pay off my bills.
We need to make Interac the choice of payment method to customers. Maybe follow the credit cards' example.
Interac Debit is a purely Canadian operation, I think. They have Interac Direct, which Canadian financial institutions and merchants are familiar with. So if they make a move towards a credit card, the timing might be right.
https://www.interac.ca/en/payments/personal/interac-direct/
A lot of Credit Unions use them. Now if we could get a few Canadian banks to follow in their footsteps - but it will only happenn if Canadians push for it.
I might actually explore changing banks for this. My Tangerine debit used to be interac but switched to visa debit at some point.
From the 1950's to a decade ago, Europe felt obligated to America for 'liberating' them from the Nazis. Today, there are few Europeans alive that remember the 1940's and 50's, and are far less prone to being in gratitude to the US. It's no longer MAGA, Make America Great Again, it is LELA - Let Europe Lead Again.
America First is really shaping up to become America Alone
They do not need anybody else. They have said it many times.
So be it. Honestly, the entire world needs to completely pivot away. Completely.
It would definitely be great to get away from Visa and MasterCard but Canada is significantly smaller than the EU population wise. Even the article says it will be trouble to reach a breaking point to make vendors acknowledge another payment method outside of common credit cards.
Love the idea and I hope the EU can make some waves to move everyone away from US tech.
I’d be thrilled to ditch American credit cards for a European solution.
I wonder if it is possible/ feasible to "piggyback" with Europe? I know this is just fanciful thinking, as I suspect it would be very difficult and expensive to decouple from Visa/ MC & Amex, and there are likely a lot of ridiculously wealthy people that in one way or another profit from the current system, so . . . Still a good thought exercise.
Why not?
Canada should join with most European initiatives.
Why is it easier to integrate to the US than to Europe?
Why is it easier to integrate to the US than to Europe?
Because a lot of Canadian business is actually US business in a trenchcoat. With free trade agreements and lax foreign ownership laws there's a fair amount of ostensibly Canadian companies that are whole or in part American owned. The whole world is kinda like that actually. Globally we've allowed them to conglomerate themselves into every market, and VC themselves into control of way more than they should be.
Funny you mention piggybacking onto Europe as that was my first thought too! The way the article brought up simpler transfers and a digital euro made me think of Canada and e-transfers. There must be some way to make it work.
"Where there a will there's a way", and while the population might have the will, business leaders and politicians may not. 😞
This appears to me to be like etransfer. I would love to see Canada do something similar to this but with etransfer.
Edit: so I have decided to start pushing companies to start excepting etransfers, I started with Skip I live in Saskatchewan so that is the only real big Canadian delivery system I could think of. Here is my email if anyone else wants to do it. I sent it to two email addresses that may work with skip as well as CBC market place. If people like my idea can we work together to push companies to do it?
marketplace@cbc.ca legal@skipthedishes.com support@skipthedishes.com
Dear SkipTheDishes Team,
I am writing to urge SkipTheDishes to offer payment options that do not rely on U.S.-based credit card networks such as Visa and Mastercard, for example Interac e-Transfer as a practical alternative to cash.
An increasing number of Canadians are actively boycotting U.S. financial infrastructure, including Visa and Mastercard, due to concerns about data sovereignty, privacy, and the ongoing commercialization of consumer transaction data. These networks do far more than process payments; they extract, analyze, and resell transaction level data, often to advertisers and third parties, at the expense of both consumers and merchants.
While cash is sometimes suggested as an alternative, it is not a realistic or accessible solution for many people. Many Canadians do not regularly carry cash, and accessing it can be inconvenient or costly. In a digital-first service like food delivery, telling customers to “just use cash” effectively excludes those who are intentionally avoiding U.S. credit card networks while still needing a functional, modern payment method.
This issue is gaining international attention. In Europe, banks, governments, and businesses are actively working to reduce dependence on Visa and Mastercard, with initiatives such as the Wero digital wallet and broader efforts to reclaim payment sovereignty. These moves reflect a growing recognition that payment systems are not neutral infrastructure, but powerful data and economic control points.
As a Canadian company, SkipTheDishes has an opportunity to align with this shift by supporting Canadian, debit-based payment options like Interac e-Transfer. Doing so would respect consumer choice, reduce reliance on U.S. controlled intermediaries, and demonstrate leadership on privacy, data protection, and economic independence.
Providing a non–credit card payment option would make SkipTheDishes more accessible to customers participating in this boycott while reinforcing trust that customer data is not being unnecessarily monetized.
Thank you for your consideration. I hope SkipTheDishes will take this concern seriously and explore more privacy-respecting, Canada-centric payment options.
Sincerely, Reann Legge
Skip WAS Canadian. Founded in 2012, purchased by UK JustEat 2014, JustEat was purchased/merged with takeaway.com(Dutch) in 2020 to form JustEat Takeaway... which is in turn a subsidiary of Prosus(Dutch) which is again in turn owned by South African VC/publishing/media giant Naspers. Naspers was known as Die Nasional Pers until 1998. DNP started as a publishing company, was a major donor to National Party in support of the Apartheid state, an NP may have held significant shares of DNP. Naspers has never acknowledged their connections to apartheid, let alone apologised. Though 127 employees submitted personal statements of apology to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers
I'm not saying we shouldn't push companies operating in Canada to use Canadian payment infrastructure. I'm saying that we should also be pushing the government to enact stricter foreign ownership laws. So much of Canadian Big Business™ is actually, when you follow the money, American or some other global bigdick-VC...and they're almost always really horrible.
I don't think etransfer will quite work. It's far from instant and often relies on the receiving party taking action in the form of accepting the transfer (yeah there's autodeposit, but you'd still need to verify you received it). Interac is an already established Canadian alternative that's widely accepted.
Would it also be an option to force companies to spin up separate entities in Europe that has isolated infrastructure?
Not saying it’s a better solution, just curious why countries don’t force companies to break up by region.