Looking Forward: What’s next for Debit?

Oscar Roque, AVP of Mobile Payments and Platforms at INTERAC

As AVP of Mobile Payments and Platforms, Oscar Roque leads the team responsible for developing products that integrate Interac debit payments into your mobile devices. He sees a robust future for further mobile integration.

In addition to Interac’s more recent move to make debit payments available for purchases through Apple Pay, Android Pay and mobile wallets, Roque is excited about mobile integration of debit-based services like Request Money.

“Request Money is a pretty cool feature,” says Roque, referring to a new feature for splitting a restaurant bill or managing payments between friends and colleagues. “With Request Money there’s no more of the awkwardness of having to remind them. All you do is initiate a Request Money via email, for example, and then [the recipient] just clicks on the link, logs into mobile banking, and fulfills [the repayment].”

Looking forward, Roque is bullish on leveraging Interac’s payment and secure identity infrastructure to integrate into a range of services including digital identity. “We’ve got three main platforms, if you think about it: your physical debit card, mobile payments, and e-Transfer. And what we’re looking towards is really to double down on some of those experiences and make payments much more seamless, and at the same time, continue to be secure.”

Interac is also looking at technologies like blockchain to unlock new use cases or enable new business models. Interac has a core competency in being able to move money across the Canadian ecosystem, transferring $360 billion annually with over 6 billion transactions, and Roque believes blockchain technology will enable Interac to amp things up.

“Being able to use blockchain as a kind of a weave across our payment vertical is a very interesting piece. So in the energy sector, being able to incentivize consumers to good behaviours, [or] more efficient ways [of using] public transportation. And blockchain technology helps us actually do that, because now we can weave in another industry alongside ours, all for the benefit of being able to incentivize consumers to do the right behaviours and focus on social good.”