This article was previously featured in the Winter 2025 issue of Strategy Magazine.

By Montgomery Burke

Interac launched in 1984 with the goal of making payments more efficient. Four decades later, the company is developing a new generation of products – and a new brand strategy to match.

Across Canada, more than 20 million Interac transactions are made every single day. About 90% of Canadians use Interac, and even people who primarily rely on credit cards use the company’s services like Interac e-Transfer. The brand’s black-and-yellow logo isn’t just on your debit card or in your banking app interface, it’s also on dog-eared stickers at the entry to nearly every store in the country. More than 450,000 businesses in Canada accept Interac, and nearly 60,000 ATMs are connected to its network. The name is ubiquitous – and, most importantly, trusted by Canadians.

But competition from new payment players is pushing Interac to innovate – which it has a long history of doing. Back in 2003, the company launched Interac e-Transfer, allowing Canadians to send money to other bank accounts. It was a service ahead of its time, but the rest of the world has caught up, albeit in a different way.

“You don’t see something like Interac in the U.S., because the market is so big,” says Lauren Mostowyk, head of integrated marketing and communications at Interac. “A regional bank might only serve one part of the country, but still be the size of a smaller Big Five bank. And even giant banks don’t have 90% of the market, like the big Canadian banks do. Everyone is kind of in it for themselves, and the end experience for the consumer is a little more fragmented.”

But that also created opportunities for disruptors like Venmo, a payment app that allows users to transfer money between bank accounts and debit or credit cards.

“Venmo came in, saw this gap and said ‘How can we make it easy for everyone to do the same thing?’” says Mostowyk. “Well, Interac e-Transfers were kind of the original Venmo, but now we’re facing more competition – and that’s a good thing. We are really amping up our products and creating a network that is faster, stronger and better than anything out there.”

Take Interac Verified, an online product that leverages data the company already has about its customers to allow them to verify their identity online. It builds on trust Interac spent the last 40 years building, providing a level of security when users need to access sensitive information on sites like the Canada Revenue Agency.

“Let’s say you want to buy a bottle of wine, but need to verify your age,” Mostowyk says. “Why show a stranger where you live and how much you weigh? A credential on your phone could verify your age through our network, because we already have these details through your banking information. You could just tap your phone and pay – and this data isn’t only useful at the LCBO, it could be used any place where foundational information is required.”

As the company updates its product offering, so too will its marketing. “Being safe and secure for me and for my money… that used to be enough for us,” says Mostowyk. “But consumer demand is forcing us to grow. As our business evolves, our marketing needs to evolve too. It has become more important to us to create a brand experience, a customer journey and, ultimately, a conversion factor on our products.”

While the customer is still the end user, Interac also needs buy-in from businesses. To reach them, it must venture further into B2B marketing. There is opportunity in showing insurance companies, telecoms and travel companies that there is value in connecting to its network and services. Doing so represents a significant shift from the consumer-focused advertising that characterized the company’s first four decades. And with that change in services and audience, Interac’s brand identity will one day change, too.

“The Interac logo is purpose-built and incredibly intentional. It is well-known and enjoys strong positive attributes,” says Mostowyk. “We have built our business on the back of our brand, but it can’t stay the same forever. The brand was built for a specific kind of business and our business is growing and changing. Our brand needs to grow and change, too. It is the most terrifying job in brand marketing, but it’s something that the organization will face over the coming years.”

A history of growing consumer trust (and confidence)

Interac has been around since 1984, but for much of that time, it operated primarily in the shadows. The company began as a non-profit association – a collaboration between RBC, CIBC, Scotiabank, TD and Desjardins to create a system that allowed financial institutions to transfer money to each other on a single network. Interac was an important part of the plumbing of Canadian banking, but its own brand was a bit of an afterthought next to the Big Five Banks that relied on its services. The brand was in virtually every wallet in the country by the 1990s, but most people didn’t give Interac much thought as an entity unto itself. Then, in the 2010s, Interac began to move from the background to the foreground.

“The brand hadn’t changed much before then,” says Leslie Vera, Interac director, brand governance and management lead, who joined the company in 2013. “We were behind the scenes, and it was almost like we didn’t exist. This was when we decided to become a more independent company, and that we should talk about the value we provide.”

Thus was born “Be in the Black.” Launched in 2015 by Zulu Alpha Kilo, the platform keyed on the value that shopping with debit can add to the lives of Canadians. It sought to valorize spending money a person already has and to live within their means.

“It was a time when people were switching to tapping credit cards for points. Before then, credit cards were used more for bigger ticket items,” says Vera. “But when you spend your own money, your purchases are more intentional. It benefits you because you enjoy what you purchase more. Because you bought it with hard-earned money.”

One commercial under the “Be in the Black” platform was set inside a music store where a man is shown purchasing a guitar strap with his Interac debit card. As he makes the transaction, a store employee launches into the familiar chords of AC/DC’s Back in Black, which provides a classic rock soundtrack for a pyrotechnic-laden sequence of shoppers shown using Interac to make every day purchases. The ad closes with a bespectacled, middle-aged man hovering above a screaming concert crowd, and an announcer chiming in with a chorus singing the brand’s praises: “It feels good to use your own money instead of credit. Interac. Be in the Black.”

“There’s a sense of control that comes from using our products and using your own money with our payment products,” says Matt Houghton, digital and integrated marketing leader at Interac. “Historically, it has been a core message for our products: use your own money and there are emotional benefits of having that control. We’ve leaned into that hard in our marketing activity.”

By the late 2010s, e-commerce was growing by leaps and bounds, and the tech sector was playing an ever-greater role in providing financial services to Canadians. Interac knew it had to shift its messaging to keep pace with the changes happening in the economy. In 2017, the company began to pivot toward the increasing role tech was beginning to play in financial services, launching the “Own your World” platform, which sought to demonstrate that Interac’s offerings were evolving to meet their needs.

One campaign encouraged women aged 45-to-50 to tap to pay. At the time, Interac’s data showed that this demographic was comfortable using chip and pin debit cards, but they weren’t tapping as often as other cohorts. So, Interac and Zulu developed a series of ads showing situations in which tapping could make their lives easier, like when paying for a manicure or when you have your hands full at the supermarket check-out.

In 2021, the brand leaned even further into the convenience of financial services technologies with its “InLife” platform, shifting the company’s messaging to communicate that when you are in control of your finances, you can make the most out of life. The company was able to extend that message through its “Money Movers” campaign that sought to reach a Quebec audience in 2024. In La Belle Province, most residential leases begin on July 1 when hundreds of thousands of Quebeckers move into new apartments on the exact same day. It’s all delightfully chaotic in a distinctly Quebec kind of way, and in the inexplicable disarray of Moving Day, Interac spotted an opportunity.

“Moving Day is specific to Quebec, and paying rent with Interac e-Transfer is something we want to promote, no matter where you live,” says Houghton. “But the average amount of Interac e-Transfers was lower in Quebec than elsewhere.”

So Interac teamed up with Zulu to target residents of Quebec, tapping into the idea that when people move, money moves, too. It essentially likened Interac to a “money moving company” and encouraged Quebeckers to use Interac e-Transfers for moving-related expenses beyond rent, such as for cleaners, movers and storage.

The brand’s 2024 “Forget Your Wallet” campaign is also part of the “InLife” platform, and sought to change consumer behaviour by encouraging people to add their debit card in a digital wallet, like Google Pay or Apple. The idea is this: people lose their wallets relatively often, but they’re much better at hanging onto their mobile phone. “When you add your debit card to your digital wallet, you don’t need to bring your wallet with you,” says Houghton. “You only need to take your phone when you go out.”

To bring this message to life, Interac filled a billboard with real wallets and filmed pedestrians’ reactions outside the company’s Bay Street HQ. “We asked people if they’d ever lost their wallet before, whether they used their debit card on their phone, and whether they looked after their phone more carefully than their wallet,” says Houghton. “It really drove the message home.”

Greater use of digital wallets could also help drive Interac’s revenues. Not only does adding a debit card to Google Pay or Apple Pay unlock opportunities to make payments using Interac, it helps keep the brand’s offerings relevant. Similar to many Interac campaigns, the catalyst for “Forget your Wallet” is rooted in the rich data it has about debit transactions.

“Too few of our customers were using digital wallets. We needed to ask why,” says Houghton. “People needed to be educated, and this was a way to get their attention and help them understand why this is such a great way to use your debit card. But we also needed to help them understand that it’s easy to do, and so we developed an educational piece on our website about how to put your card onto your phone. It is very easy, but a lot of people might think it’s harder than it actually is.”

Moving forward faster

During Interac’s first four decades, change was the only constant. And, as the company looks to the next forty years, it sees a future in which payment products will continue to evolve as competition continues to grow.

“It wasn’t until the beginning of 2024 that Interac created a specific product marketing and partner marketing portfolio,” says Mostowyk of the brand’s untapped potential. “Previously, we were very much [focused on] brand marketing: the Interac logo is on your debit card, it’s there when you access cash at an ATM, it’s there when you send an e-Transfer.”

But, as part of its “Faster Forward Together” vision, in the coming years Interac will launch products that won’t always be as visible to consumers, and which could be packaged with those provided by companies in other sectors of the economy, such as insurance or telecommunications. Its future, the company says, will be in “building a world-leading digital economy here in Canada.”

“Debit and e-Transfer have been our workhorses,” adds Mostowyk. “But we are growing into the B2B space with digital commerce, fraud protection and identity verification products. This is the path forward for us.”