Peoples Group has partnered with Feedzai, a global leader in AI-native financial crime prevention, to overhaul its enterprise fraud monitoring systems ahead of Canada’s Real-Time Rail launch later this year.
The collaboration will see Peoples Group embed Feedzai’s risk-scoring technology directly into its core transaction infrastructure, a move designed to satisfy tightening regulatory expectations and underpin a trustworthy instant settlement environment as the country’s digital payments landscape evolves. The upgrade positions the bank to support the Real-Time Rail (RTR) when it goes live in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Once RTR launches, payments will clear and settle continuously, within seconds, at any hour. That always-on model removes the settlement delays institutions have traditionally depended on to catch unauthorised transfers and complex scams before money moves. By rolling out Feedzai’s RiskOps suite across its platform, Peoples Group intends to give its partners a way to handle instant transactions with stronger protection against fraud and scams built in from the start.
Peoples Group specialises in providing the compliance frameworks, infrastructure and sponsorship that Canadian financial technology firms rely on to operate, and it is approaching the shift to instant payments with particular attention to the distinct risk profile that comes with round-the-clock settlement.
The move responds directly to how Canadian consumers are behaving and how fraud is evolving. Payments Canada’s 2025 Canadian Payment Methods and Trends Report found that 49 per cent of Canadians see real-time payments as appealing, yet 53 per cent said fraud concerns shape their shopping habits. Feedzai’s artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, which track billions of financial events worldwide each year, are intended to ease these worries by delivering immediate, data-driven protection at the moment a transaction takes place.
Implementation will happen in stages. The initial phase centres on real-time transaction fraud monitoring and alert management to bring Peoples Group into line with RTR requirements, after which the rollout will widen to cover additional payment types and broader financial crime capabilities suited to the changing compliance demands of Canada’s retail payments market. The plan also incorporates Feedzai IQ Score, an AI-native federated learning fraud network scoring tool the company introduced in June.
Peoples Group president and CEO David Raju said, “Trust is critical to driving adoption of Canada’s Real-Time Rail, and embedding fraud protection at the transaction level helps all players participate in an instant payments world with greater confidence.” He added, “For Canada to thrive, we need strong, innovative fraud detection built around the Real-Time Rail. By integrating Feedzai’s risk-scoring technology, we are bringing the learnings of other real-time systems around the globe to Canada’s modernization journey.”
Feedzai co-founder and CEO Nuno Sebastiao said, “Peoples Group and Feedzai share the goal of creating a world of safer money. By combining our proven fraud prevention technology with their modern network, together we will provide the trusted foundation needed to scale secure real-time payments nationwide.”
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