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Canadians live in one of the most technologically sophisticated countries on the planet. So why does it still take days, weeks or even months to process a cheque?

The wrench in the works is Canada’s back-end payment infrastructure. It does the job, but it’s getting a little old. Jan Pilbauer is responsible for modernizing it.

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Pilbauer is the executive director of modernization and CIO at Payments Canada. The non-profit industry organization operates several systems that handle the back-end heavy lifting needed to settle payments between businesses and financial institutions in Canada.

Many small businesses don’t accept electronic or online payments, Pilbauer says, and that needs to change. “That’s unfortunate because we need to ensure that they’re comfortable with this. It will remove friction from payments, and from the performance of our national economy.”

The problem lies not with the front-end part of payments processing, where innovations ranging from Apple Pay through to Square, PayPal and Interac eTransfer have transformed how people can send money to each other. The friction is at the back end – what he calls the “national rail” – where merchants and financial institutions must work together to settle payments between each other.