Canada’s Interac Lab gets in on innovation hub act
Canadian payments firm Interac has launched Interac Lab, “an innovation outpost and accelerator” at the Kitchener-based tech hub, Communitech.
The aim of the lab is to support research and development of fintech, offering a space for hands-on experimentation, with a focus on the industry challenges in Canada.
“Opening the Interac Lab positions us to continue to evolve as the payments sphere changes,” says Debbie Gamble, VP, digital product and platforms at Interac. “Kitchener-Waterloo is an incredible place with such a wealth of tech knowledge.”
The labs priorities will be to develop new payment capabilities, improve the way consumers and businesses move money, and explore the future of payments through new tech.
The Interac Lab will have full-time staff and a rotating group of co-op students from the local universities’ math, science and engineering programmes.
“The knowledge-sharing that comes with being a part of Communitech is invaluable to our co-op students and team, and hopefully to the others throughout the space,” says Tricia Gruetzmacher, director, Interac Lab.
She adds: “Collaborating daily with others in the tech community helps us stay nimble and agile as we create and test use cases that will accelerate our product development.”
Interac participated in a 36-hour hackathon at the start of this year, and hosted a Collision Day at Communitech in 2017. At these events, a beta-version of the Interac e-Transfer Public API was made available to allow participants to build on the platform.
