Canada

A federal regulator has agreed to review an advisory restricting Canadian credit unions' use of the words "bank" or "banking" in their marketing, but some say it will take more than that before credit unions can truly compete with banks there.

China's Alipay already has broad global reach—its mobile wallet is accepted at more than 100,000 retail locations in 70 international markets—but in North America it’s just getting started.

Royal Bank of Canada has updated its mobile app to enable personal banking users to ask Siri to pay their bills on iPhone and iPad.

Mobile wallets have failed to excite many consumers, but Canada has an extreme case of paralysis underscoring the stark need for ongoing incentives to get consumers to change their payment habits.

Toronto-based nanopay Corp. is making MintChip, a digital currency it acquired in 2015 from the Royal Canadian Mint, available to merchants looking for a lower-cost payments channel by leveraging digital cash.

CIBC plans to spend two years focusing on internal growth at PrivateBank except for some targeted wealth management acquisitions, but ultimately capital outlays or takeovers will be necessary to meet its growth ambitions.

The billionaire investor agreed to buy shares at a deep discount and provide a fresh credit line for the Canadian mortgage company, tapping a formula he used to prop up lenders from Goldman Sachs to Bank of America.

Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s second-largest lender by assets, is cutting about 450 positions, mostly at its headquarters.

Due in part to the U.S.'s lackluster adoption of contactless cards, mobile wallets had a slow and difficult time gaining hold among consumers and merchants that were unfamiliar with the tap-and-pay process or didn't have the right technology. The opposite problem plagues Canada, where contactless cards are so widely used that mobile adds little value.

Not only is the uninsured sector growing, but the Bank of Canada is seeing some riskier mortgages within that area as it studies recent disruptions in the market.