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The head of the Canadian Bankers Association says more consumer protection is needed as new entrants in the fast-growing payments space get ahead of regulation. Speaking at a Canadian Club Toronto event, association president Anthony Ostler says there are now more than 2,000 non-bank payment services providers with more expected amid initiatives like the push for open banking. The payments space has grown with numerous technology companies such as Shopify, Square and PayPal offering options, while more recently there’s been tremendous growth in services like buy now, pay later. Ostler says that while competition is good, the payments marketplace is running in front of the regulatory environment and consumers aren’t being adequately protected. He says the federal government should add consumer protections to the Retail Payments Oversight Framework as they consider next steps. Ostler also says the government should do more to boost productivity, and raised concerns about the federal ta...

Toronto home prices dropped in November, the eighth consecutive monthly decline since the Bank of Canada started reducing the supply of cheap credit. But new listings of properties continued to drop, suggesting homeowners are weathering sharp jumps in interest rates and have not been forced to sell their homes. The home price index was $1,089,800, a 1-per-cent decline from October, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB). The index, which excludes sales of extremely expensive homes and is the industry’s preferred measure of home prices, is down 5.5 per cent compared with November of last year. Activity continued to wane, with higher borrowing costs pricing many prospective buyers out of the market. Fewer of them are able to qualify for a mortgage large enough to afford homes in the Toronto region, the country’s second-most expensive real estate market after Vancouver. That, in turn, has reduced competition and made homeowners reluctant to put their properties up f...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Propelled by the shift in consumer behavior boosted by the pandemic, our adoption of contactless and digital payments has accelerated economic change in tangible ways, offering improved traceability, accessibility and security both at home and in developing countries far and wide. The market conditions have further been propelled by expanded access to mobile devices. With a majority of the world's population having a smartphone today — 86.41% according to Statista in 2022 — this further enables the rise in digital payments globally, which is expected to compound annually at about 15% in emerging markets through 2026. This democratization of payments from traditional financial institutions to telecoms, merchants, fintechs, global brands and more, has enabled the explosion of the Embedded Finance model and a compound effect on customer financial interactions throughout their digital experience. R...