Fintechs Canada is urging the federal government to use Budget 2026 to accelerate its efforts towards a more competitive and innovative financial sector. Fintechs Canada laid out five recommendations designed to lower costs and increase choice for consumers, expand access to capital for small businesses, and position Canada as a leader in digital finance.
In its written submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, the association argues that while recent federal measures, including legislative progress on consumer-driven banking and a stablecoin framework, have laid important groundwork, their impact will depend on timely and balanced implementation alongside broader efforts to reduce structural barriers to competition, ensuring access to critical payments infrastructure and technologies, and proportional and risk-based oversight.
“Canada’s financial system remains highly concentrated, with barriers to entry that limit competition and innovation,” the submission states. “The result is higher fees for everyday financial services, ongoing financing challenges for businesses, and weaker productivity.”
Fintechs Canada has recommended that the government:
- Advance the implementation of pro-competition financial sector reforms, including the Consumer-Driven Banking Act and Stablecoin Act, accelerate rollout of the real-time rail, implement commitments to eliminate investment account transfer fees, make it easier for consumers to switch providers, and give financial regulators an explicit competition mandate,
- Reform eligibility and designation processes for government-backed SME financing programs, such as the Canada Small Business Financing Program (CSBF), to enable qualified non-deposit-taking lenders to participate and better serve Canada’s small businesses,
- Amend the Income Tax Regulations to allow eligible decentralized digital assets as qualified investments in registered TFSAs and RRSPs, aligning their treatment with comparable asset classes,
- Enable a competitive Canadian dollar-denominated stablecoin framework that allows issuers and platforms to offer features including yield, in order to incentivize adoption and compete with U.S. dollar alternatives, and
- Remove structural barriers to competition in mobile payments by ensuring fair and non-discriminatory access to essential technologies, including NFC, consistent with approaches already adopted in the European Union
To read the full submission, click here.
