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Canada’s long-awaited instant payment system, Real-Time Rail (RTR), likely won’t include any of the country’s largest banks as participants in its first phase, BetaKit has learned.

The RTR system is meant to be an instant, always-on payment infrastructure for Canadians and their financial institutions to transfer funds. The system is under development by the national non-profit Payments Canada, which has a government-created mandate to handle the country’s payment systems. The RTR system’s rollout—the first phase of which is slated to go live in the fourth quarter of 2026— would also allow emergent financial companies to move money for customers without relying on banks or paying them a fee.

But four sources within the FinTech ecosystem that have knowledge of the rollout said none of Canada’s Big Six banks are currently scheduled to participate in its first phase, raising questions about how useful RTR will be without the banks, which settle the vast majority of the country’s payments. BetaKit is not naming the sources because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

To send and receive payments via RTR, both parties will need to be onboarded to the new system, Payments Canada confirmed to BetaKit in an email. Otherwise, institutions will have to use existing payment rails to move funds on behalf of customers.

The RTR system first began development as a payments modernization project in 2015, with a target launch of 2019. Since then, it has been fraught with delays: Payments Canada pushed back the rollout to 2022, then later rescheduled it for mid-2023, and again to 2026.

Canada is the only country in the G7 without an instant payment rail.