Payments Canada taps Nexi to bolster RTGS resilience

By Delisha Fernandes

Nexi, a European PayTech, has been selected by Payments Canada, the organisation responsible for Canada’s payment clearing and settlement infrastructure, to further enhance the resilience of Lynx.

Payments Canada is using Nexi’s RTGS Extreme Contingency Solution (RECS), specifically designed to ensure the reliability and resilience of the Lynx system. The technology will help the organization continue to operate in the event of a disruption or sudden disaster.

Based on the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) model, wire payments cleared and settled using Lynx are fast, irrevocable, and made with real-time settlement finality.

“The safety and soundness of Canada’s payment systems is Payments Canada’s top priority,” said Shawn Van Raay, Chief Information Officer at Payments Canada. “This work, completed in partnership with our Lynx participants, the Bank of Canada and our technology partners IBM and Nexi, provides a supplementary layer of resilience to support the continuity of our operations in a safe and secure manner.”

The Nexi RECS technology provides the organization with an additional site that can be activated in the event of an emergency, such as malicious attack, network failure, natural or accidental disaster. If such an event were to occur, the technology would allow the organization to continue to provide a core service that underpins the Canadian economy until normal business is restored.

Renato Martini, Digital Banking Solutions Director at Nexi said, “This deployment in North America provides critical resilience to the national payment infrastructure of one of the world’s largest economies. Nexi RECS delivers a highly-efficient service that plays an incredibly important role in protecting and securing RTGS for central banks and payment system operators. At a time of global turmoil, we’re proud to have delivered another major deployment that will keep payments moving, no matter what.”