The 2025 federal budget is more than a financial blueprint — it’s an execution plan for modernization. Canada is stepping into its next era of financial infrastructure with clarity, ambition, and urgency. Budget 2025 is supercharging productivity, competitiveness, and long-term economic resilience. And Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne set the tone clearly:

“The challenges are great, but the opportunities for Canada are even greater. This budget must be generational in its ambition and serve to shape our economy and our nation’s future. There is no place for withdrawal, ambiguity or even standing still. Through Budget 2025 we are building Canada Strong."

Three Priorities Shaping the Decade Ahead

Budget 2025 is anchored in three national priorities driving Canada’s modernization agenda:

• Sovereignty — advancing data and AI independence

• Security — safeguarding Canadians through resilient digital and fraud-prevention infrastructure

• Competitiveness — fueling growth through innovation and real-time financial systems

Against a backdrop of global volatility, affordability pressures, shifting trade realities, cybersecurity threats, and rapid technology shifts, Canada is investing in trusted rails and digital infrastructure. With $1.3 billion committed to AI, data mobility, and sovereign cloud — the government has made a clear bet: a more resilient, autonomous Canada will be built on secure digital infrastructure and trusted financial systems.

What Budget 2025 Delivers

Budget 2025 delivers structural modernization to power a real-time, trusted economy by 2030.

Budget 2025 confirmed legislation for the Consumer-Driven Banking Act and a major regulatory shift: the Bank of Canada will now oversee open banking, aligning it with the Retail Payment Activities Act. This transition signals that consumer-driven banking is being positioned as essential economic infrastructure — not just a consumer initiative.

Key milestones:

• Legislative introduction of the Consumer-Driven Banking Act

• Integration of data mobility rights into PIPEDA for cross-sector portability

• Read access functionality by 2026 and write access by mid-2027

Symcor’s 2025 Open Banking Survey Insights Report, developed in partnership with Open Banking Expo Canada, highlights that consumer-driven banking is not merely about regulatory compliance — it’s a strategic catalyst for growth and innovation. Notably, 64% of respondents identified competitiveness as the leading driver behind their consumer-driven banking initiatives.

Industry Readiness and Symcor’s Role

With read access expected in 2026 and write access in 2027, financial institutions must accelerate testing, API development, fraud detection frameworks, and consumer-trust efforts over the next 12-18 months.

At Symcor, we are executing on this momentum. Our API-first platform, COR.CONNECT, enables secure, high-quality data exchange between banks, fintechs, and aggregators through a single connectivity layer — embedding trust, transparency, and compliance into every transaction. 

“Canada’s accelerated consumer-driven banking timeline means the time to act is now. The window for readiness is short, but the opportunity ahead is lasting. Success will come from trusted partnerships that bring together compliance, innovation, and the infrastructure to scale securely. That’s where Symcor plays a critical role — helping institutions move with confidence and unlock real value.”

— Saba Shariff, SVP & Chief Strategy, Product & Innovation Officer, Symcor

2. Real-Time Payments: RTR Confirmed for 2026

Budget 2025 reaffirmed the long-awaited Real-Time Rail (RTR) launch for 2026 — a foundational layer for consumer-driven banking payments and embedded finance.

RTR — Canada’s new real-time exchange and clearing settlement payment system will deliver:

• Instant settlement between banks and businesses

• Improved liquidity for SMEs

• Real-time payroll, gig, and insurance payouts

With RTR entering full industry testing in 2026, market analysis projects Canada’s real-time payments market to grow from US $11.37 billion in 2025 to US $33.19 billion by 2030. More than a payments milestone, RTR will serve as the connective tissue that will enable consumer-driven banking transactions and the next generation of financial innovation.

3. National Anti-Fraud Strategy: Trust as Core Infrastructure

Budget 2025 advances a coordinated national approach to strengthen Canada’s anti-fraud and financial crime resilience. Amendments to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA) will expand the scope of covered entities — adding mortgage brokers, wealth administrators, and other intermediaries — while enhancing FINTRAC’s enforcement powers and improving cross-sector information sharing.

Complementing this, the government will launch the Financial Crimes Agency of Canada in 2026 as a federal hub uniting oversight of money laundering, sanctions, and fraud. Together, these measures establish fraud prevention and trusted data-sharing as integral components of the country’s economic infrastructure.

Key measures:

• Launch of the Financial Crimes Agency of Canada (2026)

• Enhanced identity verification requirements under Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and privacy laws

• $25.7 million for Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for AI-based fraud detection capabilities

• $30 million to establish “Trust Network Canada” — a data-sharing platform for verified institutions

With global scam losses estimated at US$442 billion annually (Global Anti-Scam Alliance, 2025), this strategy positions Canada alongside the EU’s PSD3 framework and the UK’s Fraud Charter in prioritizing digital trust and collaborative enforcement.

Symcor’s Leadership in Fraud Intelligence

Symcor has long championed collaborative fraud defense across Canada’s financial ecosystem. Through COR.IQ, Symcor operates the country’s only multi-bank fraud consortium, uniting Canada’s largest financial institutions to combat financial crime with unmatched depth and scale.

Our fraud fighting network is powered by advanced analytics, enabling high-accuracy detection while reducing false positives. Integrated AML and fraud compliance within one ecosystem allows institutions to meet new regulatory expectations under the revised PCMLTFA.

As an active member of the Canadian Anti-Scam Coalition, Symcor collaborates across financial, telecommunications, and public sectors to protect Canadians from evolving threats. 

“Fraud doesn’t respect borders or institutions and shifts rapidly. This is an opportunity to close the gaps between prevention, detection, and enforcement.”
— Sanjeev Chib, VP Product - Payment Fraud Solutions, Symcor

4. Digital Sovereignty and AI Infrastructure

Digital sovereignty is now economic policy. Canada will invest $925.6 million to strengthen its sovereign AI and cloud capabilities, including:

• Expansion of Canadian-based compute infrastructure

• National AI Framework for transparency and ethical governance

• Partnerships with universities and the private sector to protect IP

• Creation of a “Digital Trust Centre of Excellence” to guide policy implementation

Canada’s AI Ambition Needs Trusted Infrastructure

As Canada accelerates investment in sovereign AI and data infrastructure, Symcor’s longstanding commitment to security, compliance, and operational resilience reflects what digital sovereignty looks like in practice.

Symcor is trusted by Canada’s largest organizations to safeguard critical financial data — supported by 100% Canadian data residency across our nationwide infrastructure. Our defense-in-depth security framework integrates layered controls to protect information from both internal and external threats. And privacy-by-design principles embedded throughout the data lifecycle, ensures compliance amid an evolving regulatory landscape.

Symcor’s Business Continuity and Crisis Management frameworks, aligned with ISO 22301:2019, provide proven resilience, while our policies and standards, aligned with ISO/IEC 27002, NIST 800-53, and PCI DSS, are reviewed annually to uphold the highest levels of data protection.

Together, these measures position Symcor as a trusted infrastructure partner — one that’s ready to support Canada’s ambitions for sovereign AI, responsible data exchange, and secure modernization across the financial ecosystem.

Symcor’s Perspective: Trusted Rails for a Real-Time Nation

For over 25 years, Symcor has enabled Canada’s financial trust network through secure data exchange, payments clearing, and fraud analytics. Budget 2025 confirms why this role matters more than ever: the nation’s modernization depends on trusted data, interoperable systems, and fraud-resilient design — areas where Symcor continues to deliver measurable impact.

“Symcor is not waiting for regulation to catch up — we’re already operationalizing trusted exchange models across Canada’s financial ecosystem to help institutions modernize their payments and consumer-driven banking programs.”

— Joyce Wong, VP Payments & Open Banking, Symcor