Interac Debit cards are pretty unique when it comes to online acceptance. Interac was not intended for use online, but over the years there have been a few paths carved out to allow for online capabilities.  Interac is supported on physical terminals supported through our integration.

Interac Online – 

 Interac Online has been available for years. This is a process that allows customers to navigate to a website, and when they are ready to pay they will be shown a few options to click during checkout (e.g. Visa, Mastercard, and Interac Online). If the cardholder selects Interac Online, they will be prompted to leave the merchant website where they will then be directed to their personal bank or credit union website. The cardholder will need to log into their online banking portal and will complete the debit transaction there, they will be returned to the merchant site once complete.

 The Interac Online process involves quite a bit of friction for the cardholder, and has been on the decline in Canada for several years. Most of the major banks in Canada have dropped support for Interac Online. It is primarily the credit union card issuers that continue to support the program. I am not seeing any evidence that the previous Sage interface to Chase supported Interac Online processing.  There will be development to complete, which we do not recommend.

 Please note that Interac cards issued as a co-branded card (which I believe represent the majority in Canada) cannot be used with Interac Online. Examples of co-branded Interac cards are those issued with Visa Debit or Debit MasterCard branding on the card.  As an example, TD Bank in Canada issues co-branded Interac and Visa Debit cards, which cannot be used to execute an Interac Online transaction.

 Visa Debit / Debit MasterCard – 

 Most of the 5 major banks in Canada issue their Interac Cards as co-branded. These cards include the Interac Brand Logo, and the Visa Debit brand logo. I believe one bank may have started issuing Interac Cards that include the Interac band and the Debit Mastercard brand. If these cards are presented in the card-present world, they are processed over the Interac Debit network rails. If these cards are presented in the Ecommerce / Card-not-present world they follow the Visa (or Mastercard) network rails. In this case they are still processed as DEBIT transactions (not credit), funded from the cardholder’s bank account and qualifies for a lower interchange rate than credit.

 All of our host processing platforms support Visa Debit and Debit Mastercard, and there is nothing special to do in order to support. Mutual clients would only need to opt-in to support of Visa Debit / Debit Mastercard method of payment which we can easily setup on our host side.  

 Interac In-app / In-browser – 

 Interac In-app / In-browser allows for Interac to be submitted within a digital wallet transaction (ApplePay / GooglePay). This is fully supported within all of our host processing platforms.  Paya however would need to develop in support of Digital Wallets in general to support Interac In-App.