Paramount Commerce Among First to Go Live on Canada’s Real-Time Rail

As one of the RTR’s first active participants, Paramount Commerce enables merchants and partners to access next-generation payment capabilities from day one.

TORONTO, CANADA, November 9, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Paramount Commerce, Canada’s leading pay-by-bank provider, today announced its official launch on Canada’s Real-Time Rail (RTR), operated by Payments Canada. As a member of the initial cohort of active participants, Paramount Commerce is driving the first wave of real-time payments, delivering a historic milestone for the national financial ecosystem.

Being one of the first-to-market on the RTR enables Paramount Commerce’s merchants and partners to benefit immediately from next-generation payment capabilities. This early access unlocks 24/7 settlement, higher transaction limits, and mandatory proactive fraud mitigation. The sequenced RTR rollout serves as an early-adoption phase for Paramount Commerce, positioning its merchants to scale the moment major Canadian banks onboard in 2027.

Paramount Commerce connects directly to the RTR without intermediaries. This direct connection eliminates complexity, reduces delays, and removes points of failure. By integrating with Paramount Commerce, eligible payment providers, platforms, and merchants instantly gain RTR capabilities and first access to new features as they roll out.

“We’re thrilled to be part of such a major milestone in Canada’s new national payment system,” said Sereena Boparai, Chief Revenue Officer at Paramount Commerce. “It’s an honour to have worked alongside the Payments Canada team and industry participants to help advance Canada’s payments infrastructure and support the next chapter of payments innovation. Delivering this first-mover advantage to our merchants is exactly what we strive for. This is only the beginning.”

“The RTR provides Canada with a modern, sovereign digital highway, and its full potential will be realized as our members and participants actively build on top of it,” said Donna Kinoshita, Chief Payments Officer at Payments Canada. “By connecting early, participants like Paramount Commerce are taking essential first steps: building the capabilities, testing use cases, and laying the groundwork so Canadian businesses are ready to capitalize on instant, 24/7 payments as the broader financial community comes online.”

About Paramount Commerce
Paramount Commerce is Canada’s leading pay by bank provider for high-growth industries. The company enables leading brands to accept real-time, secure, bank account-based payments that reduce friction at checkout and improve the experience for merchants and consumers. Leveraging over 20 years of proprietary data, Paramount has processed more than $100 billion in volume for over 4 million active consumers, ensuring reliability through smart bank routing and platform redundancy.

About Payments Canada
Payments Canada enables prosperity, productivity and safety for Canada through trusted, critical national payment infrastructure. As a public-purpose organization, they own and operate Canada’s critical national payment systems: Lynx, its high-value payment system; the Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS), its retail batch payment system; and the Real-Time Rail (RTR), its real-time payment system. They establish the by-laws, rules and standards that govern these systems, which cleared and settled $103 trillion in 2025 — more than $411 billion every business day. Transactions that pass through their systems include debit card payments, pre-authorized debits, direct deposits, bill payments, wire payments and cheques. In collaboration with its diverse membership, they continue to modernize Canada’s payment ecosystem to promote innovation, competition and deliver efficiencies that power a modern economy.

Kristi Lewis
Paramount Commerce
media@paramountcommerce.com
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
YouTube

Media gallery