What this section covers, and what it does not
Three things decide whether money moves when you expect it to: the rail it travels on, the checks in front of that rail, and the schedule the receiving business runs. Almost every complaint about a slow payment is really about one of the last two, which is why a comparison of logos answers nothing. The pages here take each layer separately — how a domestic bank transfer actually clears, what identity and source-of-funds checks are for, and why the word "instant" describes a network rather than a promise.
What is not here: operator listings, rankings, offers or promotional comparisons. This is reporting on payment infrastructure, in the same register as the technology beat, and the one commercial link that exists on the site is marked where it appears.
Why Canada first
Because that is where this coverage started and where the ground moved most. Two Canadian bank-transfer intermediaries that had been standard for a decade — iDebit and InstaDebit — both stopped operating in 2026, and the traffic went to the domestic network almost every Canadian account is already attached to. That transition is documented rather than summarised: what the closed services did, what happens to a balance left behind, and what the replacement changes in practice.
The same structure applies wherever the rails differ: the questions are which method the cashier supports in both directions, which documents are wanted and when, and what the payout schedule is. All four are answerable before a deposit, and all four are more useful than a star rating.
How to read a payment page here
Every page states what is verifiable and attributes the rest. Where a network publishes its own rule — Interac's answer on transfer limits, for instance — it is quoted rather than paraphrased, because the exact wording is the point: limits are set by your financial institution, not by the network, which is why two people compare different numbers and both are right.
