Good to know. Thanks for replying.

If you sort your feed by active, posts with new comments are pushed to the top even if the post itself is old

The Big Six will do anything in their power to keep themselves out of this scheme. I recall years ago when I worked at one of them, the first initiatives for CBDC were starting. The people involved told me the direction from above was that no system that doesn't invovle the bank should be considered. Their goal was to propose a bank-involving system to the gov't in order to ensure the bank is a necessary part of it. The whole promise of CBDC was (still is) that it allows payment transactions and "chequing accounts" that don't require private bank accounts and therefore bank fees.

It's nice to see that Payments Canada is moving. I'm guessing credit unions would also jump on it.

I skimmed right past that part of the article, but yes I think that is what the article is implying.

Betakit is focused on how this affects fintech startups (they mention in the article that "Wealthsimple vice-president of payments strategy and chief compliance officer, Hanna Zaidi, sits on BetaKit’s board of directors").

However, it also sounds like the banks are being selfish at the expense of regular Canadians too.

I have added more excerpts and emphasis to highlight that information

From my limited understanding, this is about upgrading the backend systems that e transfers (and other payment systems) use.

Etransfers feel instantaneous in the current system, but in the background the money doesn't actually make it in to your account right away. That's also why some payments take time to clear (whether a few hours or days), and why certain things can't be done after hours / on bank holidays.

Interac is the entity that will be running this new system: https://www.payments.ca/payments-canada-selects-interac-corp-exchange-solution-provider-canadas-new-real-time-payments

More from this article:

Canada is the only country in the G7 without an instant payment rail. RTR is meant to support higher-priced transactions of up to $100,000 and settle them instantly. Existing payment rails are limited by speed and transfer size. When making payments, Canadians typically see money leave their accounts right away, but transactions are actually settled within hours or days—which is why it can take up to three business days for a credit card payment to post. While Interac’s e-Transfer system is faster than those traditional payment rails, it typically limits consumer transfers to $3,000, and businesses to $25,000.

The Bank of Canada’s senior deputy governor, Carolyn Rogers, said in a speech last year that RTR and open banking are two important changes coming to Canada’s financial sector that will likely improve competition. The establishment of RTR could bring more than $3 billion in efficiency gains to the Canadian economy over its first five years, according to a 2023 study by think tank C.D. Howe Institute.

What makes this better/different than interac and e-transfers?

My guess is they don't want something that interferes with their fee-overloaded oligopoly.

the post was from four months ago. How did you come upon it?

This maybe a little off topic, I have both and I hate how much ibkr yells at you for making a market trade. (Maybe it's my fault and I have something configured wrong).

Bro I buy the most boring and liquid etfs and hold them for years. Just put the etf in the damn bag.

Not disappointed because I expected no more, these companies already pray on day traders gamblers, they were just missing out on the latest "products" so it was a matter of time

Honestly, I am very disappointed by Wealthsimple (and Questrade) for releasing this blight on consumer investors who are too ignorant to distinguish long-term investment from gambling.

Thanks for your thoughts. I have to say I've been feeling those vibes for a long time now, but due to laziness haven't done much about them.

Flinks is absolutely insane. I was shocked when I was setting it up and realized it actually needed password and second factor. And I'm also so confused by the necessity of this as almost all banks already provide access delegation to the CRA and other government services.

I'm similarly annoyed by their new gambling venture. I don't care if people want to gamble, but it makes me uncomfortable that my financial institution has a stake in this industry (although, counter point, the house always wins), and I just wish it were boring and out of the way as it seems to have been some years ago. But is Questrade any better, and if it actually is, is it not likely to enshittify too over the coming few years? I'll definitely think about that before moving.

The first and most obvious would I suppose be that their automated investing account has proven useless to me. The positions they chose and the fees resulted in losses the first couple of years and barely scraped back to +10% the last couple. I immediately beat it 3x by just dumping into ETFs, and even beat it with my for-funsies unregistered.

The rest is vibes. Everything they do gives me major "fintech company that will lose my money in a couple of years" e.g Yotta. I have felt a little put off for a while due to things like higher CDIC limit which is achieved via them using other companies.

For chequing account holders, Wealthsimple may spread client funds across one or multiple CDIC members in order to extend the CDIC coverage to up to $1,000,000 for eligible deposits. Source

Pair that with their Cash card being a prepaid credit card and it feels as though they're pairing some really odd methods together just to get the same % return I can get elsewhere.

A point which I had against them, but is quickly becoming irrelevant as other finance websites including Questrade follow, is the derelection of traditional account linking in favour of an insistence to use Flinks. Giving my bank password to a random third party that should never need to be in the process is insanity to me. Why banks can't just setup Oauth schemes I don't know. I guess I'll be using etransfer more and more for now.

The final nail this week was their emailing me to announce a prediction market (gambling) service. Wealthsimple Predict is the latest in their line of chasing trends and they claim you can "predict" (gamble) things as menial as the weather. I understand stocks have risk and can be seen as a gamble, but "prediction markets" are pretty obviously gambling in a bow-tie. Keep it to the casinos, I'm out.

In summary, I want my financial institutions boring. I don't want my money to be with a company that is constantly trying to chase the newest fad, find loopholes in the banking system to get an extra 0.5%, and making gambles (literally and figuratively). It gives me constant doubt as to their future.

Could you explain more about the reasoning to move out of Wealthsimple?

Great point on the transfer bonus, I didn't know they did that.

If you trade lots of options or international stocks, then IBKR is amazing. However, as you're just leaving your ETFs in your account, Questrade is more than sufficient.

Questrade may have transfer-in bonus. You may consider to wait for it

Thank you for the input. :)

I would recommend Questrade. It will do everything you need and way way more. Super low fees, good support, based in Canada. I’ve been investing with them for nearly 20 years.

Ah yes, a fine of 0% of stolen gains, a classic

Credit Unions!!! Yesss!!!! You can look here to help check if your Credit Union follows CorpB ethics standard

https://bcorpdirectory.ca

We gonna have this service protecting the rich by limiting orders for certain stocks.

While Questrade makes it super difficult to close your account and holds your data for 7 years.

Well said.

Money from taxes is not printed from thin air. Printing from thin air (without replacing old bills) causes additional inflation and functional governments only do it to regulate deflation.

The idea that government steals from people (in principle) is nonsense. The work done by gov't employees is no differet than the work done by Loblaws (Big Grocer) employees. There's almost always less value that comes back to us from profitable private corporations because the net income often disappears from the economy. Sometimes in Galen's castle, other times it goes offshore into the multinational black hole.

I am saying this as someone who is in a high tax bracket.

If you can do work the gov't needs done - apply and do the work. The public sector is there because the private sector can't or won't do all society needs for reasonable prices. Especially so when the private sector shits the bed in a depression, like it used to do regularly a century ago, till we built a public sector to wipe its ass.