Interac president and CEO, Jeremy Wilmot, has worked his way well up the ladder to lead the highly successful payment solutions company he does today. Mr Wilcot worked in several sales and marketing roles at Fujitsu Services from 1989 to 1999 before moving to ACI Worldwide. There he served ACI until 2023. During that time, he operated as CMO, CPO, CRO, VP, and Group President. Between 2021 and 2023, Mr Wilcot supported several other companies, either serving as a board member, advisor, mentor, or investor.
In June 2023, Interac announced Mr Wilmot as their new president, CEO, and board director. In 2024, Interac declared it had some big plans for growth. Below is a look at how the company aims to grow, why it has set the aims it has, and the challenges it could face as it pursues them.
Hiring new directors
In early 2024, the company brought on board two new directors — Glenn Wolff, as chief client officer, and Ted Bowman, as chief product officer — to accelerate the company’s growth and transformation.
Mr Wolff joined from Mr Wilmot’s previous company, ACI Worldwide, where he was president, Canada, and Mr Bowman from Nets/Nexi, where he served as VP and then chief product officer for its future platforms. Mr Wilmot had selected the two men because of their successful track record in bringing products to market.
An ambitious three-year strategic plan for growth
But the biggest development in Interac’s quest for growth is the announcement of the company’s three-year strategic plan in July 2024. The plan, discussed by the CEO and president on the company’s website, is Interac’s “North Star” and, according to Mr Wilmot in his article, will “lead Canada to digital prosperity.”
The plan’s overall aim is to position Canada as a global leader in digital payment innovation and protection and rests on three pillars:
- Interac as operator
- Interac as protector
- Interac as enabler
Operator
For several years, Payments Canada has been developing the Real- Time Rail (RTR) system, which will extend account-to-account payments across the economy. Interac will support the project by building the real-time payment, account-to-account payment infrastructure. The system will implement the underlying technology used to build Interac’s e-Transfer and will make everyday transactions easier and more convenient. Merchants will also be able to access proceeds quickly, which will improve their cash flow, and businesses can build new products and services that implement real-time payments.
Protector
Fraud is a huge problem in Canada, costing the economy billions, and Interac is turning extra attention to fraud prevention and detection to become a leader in the Canadian financial system and on the world stage. Mr Wilmot, while speaking to Fast Company, stated the company’s interest was in “looking to provide a real-time system that has fraud prevention built in from the beginning.”
The company will be looking at verification to protect against Authorized Push Payment (APP) fraud, a type of fraud that entails hoodwinking a person into transferring funds to a malicious party through a legitimate-looking request. It will also be looking at artificial intelligence (AI) and how it can harness AI technology to detect fraud.
Enabler
As an enabler, Interac will expand its function of connecting consumers, businesses, and financial institutions with seamless, secure payment experiences. The company will continue to invest in its Interac Debit, e-Transfer, and Verified business lines, but will also focus on a digital checkout tailored specifically to meet Canadian’s needs.
Interac’s infrastructure has become central to many digital payment ecosystems in Canada, from e-commerce to online entertainment. For example, in the growing online gaming sector, and specifically for online casinos, players increasingly prefer trusted and secure payment methods for deposits and withdrawals, Casino.ca rank the best ones with Interac, helping Canadians identify which providers have the smoothest and safest payment experiences using the popular domestic system. This kind of consumer trust demonstrates how Interac has evolved from a simple debit solution into an essential part of Canada’s broader digital economy.
No easy task
Interac has every chance of achieving the plan’s objectives. However, implementing the plan brings significant challenges. Mr Wilmot has started tackling them by transforming the organization internally and adopting an agile working environment across the company. In any process of change, individuals’ behavior and mindset create obstacles, as some employees like the current way of doing things and resist change. Changing the culture to generate speed and agility to deliver has been one focus.
Another problem is communication and collaboration across the entire ecosystem, whether it’s financial institutions or technology providers, so that the strategy can deliver the full benefits. Collaboration has been the second focus.
Meanwhile, the fraudsters are still going about their malicious business and developing new ways to gain by dishonest means. Keeping the focus on them while pursuing the other aims of the plan is the third focus and requires responsible data sharing.
These are exciting times as Interac attempts to become not only a Canadian leader in financial innovation and protection, but also a world one. The company has a clear strategic plan to guide it towards this goal. All eyes will be on Jeremy Wilmot to see if he can deliver the digital prosperity his plan promises.
