Interac
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| Operating area | Canada |
|---|---|
| Members | 83 |
| ATMs | 59,000 |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Website | interac |
The Interac Association (branded as simply Interac) is a Canadian nonprofit interbank network that links financial institutions and other enterprises for the purpose of exchanging electronic financial transactions. Interac was founded in 1984 as a cooperative venture between five financial institutions: RBC, CIBC, Scotiabank, TD, and Desjardins. Interac serves as the Canadian debit card system, as the traditional debit card providers (Visa and MasterCard) rarely provide debit cards in Canada. A 2010 request by Interac to become a for-profit organization was rejected by the federal Competition Bureau.
By 2010, there were over 80 member organizations and there were over 59,000 Automated Banking Machines that can be accessed through the Interac network in Canada and over 450,000 merchant locations accepting it. Interac's head office is located at Royal Bank Plaza in Toronto.
Interac Association is the organization responsible for the development of a national network of two shared electronic financial services:
IDP purchases can be made at all retailers participating in the program, regardless of the financial institution issuing the debit card being used, and normally IDP will not charge any fees to the purchaser for using the program. Banks may levy a charge for withdrawing funds from the account used to fund the purchase, but these fees are not associated with IDP itself. IDP will instead charge flat fee to the retailers. There are just under 550,000 IDP terminals in use throughout Canada; through these terminals 3.5 billion Point of Service POS transactions were completed totaling 156 billion Canadian dollars in transactions in 2007. On December 23, 2005, a new record for single day transactions was set with 15.5 million transactions processed.
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