The Government of Canada is taking another step toward strengthening the country’s financial systems and fraud prevention with new anti-fraud regulations. Each is designed to protect consumers from fraud while advancing a modern, more competitive banking landscape.
The proposed measures, published in Canada Gazette, Part I, support two significant initiatives:
1. New protections aimed at reducing consumer-targeted fraud
2. The implementation of Canada’s long-awaited consumer-driven banking framework, otherwise known as open banking.
Together, the proposals are intended to enhance financial security, give Canadians greater control over their banking experience, and encourage innovation across the financial sector.
Strengthening protections against consumer fraud
As part of Canada’s first National Anti-Fraud Strategy, proposed regulations targeting consumer fraud have been pre-published for a 30-day public comment period.
The regulations would implement amendments to the Bank Act introduced through Bill C-15, establishing new requirements for banks to better detect, prevent, and respond to fraud that targets consumers.
Among the proposed requirements, banks would be required to:
- Maintain policies and procedures to detect consumer-targeted fraud and help reduce its impacts.
- Obtain a customer’s express consent before enabling certain electronic funds transfer capabilities, including wire transfers.
- Allow consumers to disable specified account capabilities if they choose.
- Process customer requests to adjust withdrawal and transaction limits within prescribed timelines.
- Collect and annually report specified fraud-related information to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC).
The legislation also requires the Commissioner of the FCAC to provide the Minister of Finance with an annual report summarizing fraud reports received from banks.
The initiative comes as fraud continues to have a significant financial impact across Canada. According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, Canadians lost more than $704 million to fraud in 2025.
Reported losses since 2022 have exceeded $2.4 billion. Officials also note that only an estimated 5 to 10 percent of scams are reported, suggesting the true scope of fraud is considerably larger.
Advancing consumer-driven banking
Alongside the anti-fraud regulations, the government has also pre-published proposed Consumer-Driven Banking Regulations for a 60-day public consultation period.
The regulations support the implementation of the Consumer-Driven Banking Act and represent another milestone in establishing Canada’s consumer-driven banking framework.
Once implemented, the framework will allow Canadians and businesses to securely share their financial information with accredited service providers of their choosing.
The government says this approach is intended to increase competition within the financial sector while giving consumers greater control over their financial data and access to new financial management tools.
The proposed regulations outline how the framework would operate by establishing requirements related to:
- Accreditation of participating organizations.
- Data scope and technical standards.
- National security protections.
- Responsibilities and liabilities of participating entities.
- Duties of accredited third-party service providers.
- Assessment fees.
- Compliance and enforcement measures.
Implementation will occur through a staggered approach, beginning with accreditation requirements. Additional provisions covering common rules and assessment fees are expected to come into force within one year after the regulations are finalized.
Further details regarding implementation timelines for different products and services will be released with the final regulations.
Replacing screen scraping with secure data sharing
The proposed framework also aims to address an existing security concern affecting millions of Canadians.
Approximately nine million Canadians currently share financial information using “screen scraping”.
This is when customers provide their online banking credentials to third-party applications. This method can expose users to increased security, privacy, and liability risks.
Under the consumer-driven banking framework, screen scraping would be replaced with secure, application programming interface (API)-based data sharing. This will allow consumers to share financial information without disclosing their banking credentials.
Oversight of the framework would fall to the Bank of Canada, which would supervise participating financial institutions, accredited third-party providers, the technical standards body, and the external complaints body.
The Bank would also maintain a public registry of participating organizations to promote transparency and consumer confidence.
Supporting Competition and Consumer Confidence
The proposed regulations align with the government’s commitment in the 2026 Spring Economic Update to promote greater competition in Canada’s financial sector while helping lower financial costs for Canadians.
Commenting on the announcement, Minister of Finance and National Revenue François-Philippe Champagne said the measures are intended to improve both security and innovation within Canada’s financial system:
“We are taking action to ensure Canadians can feel confident that their financial systems are secure, while at the same time strengthening economic resilience, increasing innovation and competition in the financial sector, as well as fostering new industry partnerships.”
Both sets of proposed regulations are now open for public consultation before being finalized. If adopted, they would form an important part of Canada’s evolving financial regulatory framework, with the goal of improving consumer protection while supporting a more secure and competitive banking system.
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