Payments Canada has reached a major milestone in the technical build of the Real-Time Rail (RTR).
The build of the new clearing and settlement component surpassed 50 per cent completion in early February. Replatforming of the exchange has also successfully surpassed its 50 per cent mark and we remain on track to complete all of the RTR system components and move to testing later this year, as planned.
The clearing and settlement component will move funds between financial institutions with each payment processed by the real-time exchange or a third party exchange in order to facilitate the instant transfer of funds. The clearing and settlement and the real-time exchange are two core components of the RTR, supported by centralized fraud services that will cover all transactions from any exchange that flow through the new clearing and settlement component, and the associated legal framework of by-laws, rules and standards to ensure safety and soundness of the new system.
The clearing and settlement component must be able to complete a complex series of steps in line with real-time payment processing of the exchanges. It must also be able to do it at scale to serve a large volume of Canadian businesses and consumers looking to transfer their funds simultaneously.
The technical build of the clearing and settlement component consists of hundreds of thousands of lines of code that direct the system to perform clearing and settlement steps while initiating necessary safety checks. Teams of software engineers, system architects and developers are working diligently to ensure the build is completed efficiently and effectively.
Concurrently, the team is adapting the real-time exchange component for integration with the clearing and settlement component so that the two systems can work together seamlessly and efficiently. The exchange is a system that sends and receives payment messages, including information such as the dollar amount of the transfer, determines routing and manages payment status.
Once the clearing and settlement technical build is complete and integrated with the exchange component and the centralized fraud services, the team will move to a multi-stage testing phase. As a critical piece of national infrastructure responsible for the secure transfer of funds essential to the Canadian economy, the RTR will be launched after successfully completing fully-integrated testing both internally and with the industry.