Industry Updates

Real-time payment rails, embedded finance, and rising customer expectations have pushed payments into the center of how businesses operate. 

On February 17, 2026, the Bank of Canada did something it had never done before under the newly enacted Retail Payment Activities Act. It issued an immediate compliance order against XTM Inc., ordering the company and its affiliated entities, including the AnyDay platform, to cease all payment activity, effective immediately.

Imagine a family displaced by a wildfire. Their home is gone and personal belongings are lost. Identification, bank cards, and access to online banking may no longer be available.

The economics of payment have changed. Across consumer payments, settlement cycles have collapsed, and money now moves when value is exchanged, not days or weeks later.

Trust rarely collapses all at once. In payment programs, it usually breaks down in the margins. 

For a long time, enterprise payments involved a pretty familiar trade-off. Banks offered security, safeguards, and regulatory comfort, but moving money through them could be slow and inflexible. 

Every year, large sums of money intended for disaster relief, public benefits, and community programs fail to reach the people they’re meant to support, undermining trust in the organizations running the programs.

Every time money moves - whether it’s loading a payroll card, topping up a digital wallet, or sending an instant payout - there’s a quiet workhorse operating in the background. It’s called the Demand Deposit Account (DDA). 

As recently as a few years ago, prepaid was still thought of as a convenient alternative to cash or checks. It was useful, but it was more of a niche offering. Today, it’s a core part of the money-movement infrastructure.

Many enterprises still think about payment tools just as pipes for moving money. ‍You load funds, issue physical or virtual cards, payments happen, and reconciliation follows. But that’s an increasingly inaccurate view. Today, payments are also governance engines with the ability to enforce rules, automate oversight, and embed accountability into every transaction.‍