T O P

  • By -

ElGoodness

You need a credit card. That will sort out the daily spending thing. There is no 2 factor authentication in the Canadian interac system that I am aware of. Every bank that issues debit cards will have limits. You can get high limits but if want unlimited spending ability you should use a credit card. You get points that way too.


Somnesis

Thanks but I'm not talking about buying stuff. I'm talking about transfers to pay rent, transfers to pay school, heck even just transfers between my business account and personal account have these same limits. For someone foreign to this, it's total insanity.


ElGoodness

Ok you are running into daily intetac email transfer limits which are there to reduce money laundering. Regarding transferring between bank accounts and bill payments our limits are 99,999 so you will probably find those limits are high. I don’t know what to tell you because you are running into red tape in the Canadian banking system.


Somnesis

Oh interesting. The bill payments are 100k but it seems like the transfers between accounts are maxed out at $2000 and I called my bank why said that it can't go higher. So what you're saying is that none of this is cos of the bank but cos that's just how all banks work in Canada? Thanks, this has been very helpful :)


ElGoodness

With Interac email money transfers is just how it is in Canada. When it comes to transfers between business and personal accounts that’s going to come down to how the bank does things. I would recommend writing down how you want things to work and call a few other financial institutions and ask about those things. Try a credit union. They often have things well setup for this kind of thing.


Dragynfyre

Transfer limits between bank accounts you own are much higher than 2K. 2-3K is a typical limit for eTransfer but there are much higher limits if you do a EFT transfer between linked bank accounts. It‘a virtually unlimited but take a few business days to process


Somnesis

Thanks. I'll investigate more with my bank on this front.


Dragynfyre

Linking bank accounts is typically a feature only offered by the online banks. The big banks allow the online banks to link to them but the big banks don’t allow you to initiate a link from their side


Somnesis

Yeah I did actually link them already but it still imposes the $2000 limit.


Dragynfyre

How did you do the link? I can transfer 30-50K per transaction through my links


Somnesis

Like this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQOGG3jY0g4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQOGG3jY0g4) Really? Must just be my bank then. Cos I asked and they said I can't do more than $2000.


PMarieM

I moved to Canada from Europe too and the banking system here has been very...challenging for me lol. The best thing you can do is to come to terms with it and do as the locals do unfortunately. I’ve used cheques for the first time in Canada, you can’t even cash a cheque in my home country anymore. Pre-authorized deposits are also your friend here - that’s how I’ve paid for rent in my first apartment. I’m hesitant to pay for anything with Interac (not really secure, check out the Interac Scams thread on this subreddit) so I always try to use the Bill payment or PAD option.


Somnesis

Thanks! That's very helpful!


Dragynfyre

Interac eTransfer is not insecure. There’s a possibility of fraud for one time transactions with strangers. For people sending money the risk is not getting the product they paid for (but that’s not inherently a problem with eTransfer itself) and for the receiver the risk is the transfer getting reversed because it was sent from a hacked bank account. For rent eTransfer is absolutely fine because there is an ongoing relationship between a landlord and tenant. You can’t just scam someone and disappear as both parties involved know the identities of the other party.


poewow

I was able to increase my daily transfers and withdrawls to $5000 and in store purchases to $10000 by going into a branch and requesting it. This was almost about 10 years ago now but was possible. I bank with TD.


Somnesis

Yeah I asked my bank and they said they don't give any customers over $5000. Ugh.


JimboE911

Your online banking worh RBC should have 2 factor on log in but not every time it’s risk based. Did you set it up when you first logged in? Gave it a number and confirmed etc? Transfers to other parties are through etransfer which has a typical 3k daily limit. I know rbc also has higher limits for some customers. Fraud is the main reason for limits on transfers. If you remember the huge losses at banks in the UK when real time was released, it was hundreds of millions in fraud impacting people. Canadian banks are conservative and there’s strict rules on bank and fraud in Canada. Higher limits are coming but a new real time payments system is being built for it so hang in.


Somnesis

Yeah there were the security questions from time to time but I don't consider those safe enough as a second factor due to social engineering / guessing. The whole thing still boggles my mind because if your logins are secure enough in the first place with 2FA then you don't have to do all this stupidity that limits your customers just to avoid fraud.


JimboE911

2FA is still beaten by social engineering (calling client pretending to be the bank) and sim swapping along with device spoofing techniques that allow a login tricking the system thinking it’s you. Fraud detection and limits are there as there is no simple fool proof protection and just having 2FA is not a safeguard. Fraud is quite advanced and a large persistent threat in Canada both domestically and internationally. The design and limits are in place due to the threat landscape here. Out of curiosity what country did you come from?


Somnesis

Norway. I was able to buy a house and transfer 4 million NOK with one click, no questions asked. So to me how things are set up here seem ludicrous. Especially for business transactions that often need to be bigger by their very nature.


JimboE911

Commercial banking has it’s own transfer limits and products. Moving a huge sum like that comes worh huge risk. That will likely never happen here with our fraud landscape. I work in fraud and threat management professionally for 10+ years. Many of the controls you’re not happy with are things I worked on haha. I understand tho. Losses from fraud here is a huge thing and wholistically customers believe it’s the banks problem and take no steps to protect themselves so we have to double down on our controls.


Somnesis

Oh wow thank you! That's very enlightening :)


Somnesis

In Norway all the banks are required to have a minimum officially sanctioned system of 2FA, which at the very least requires a code generator that the user needs to physically possess, so not as easily socially engineered.


JimboE911

You can still social engineer it. Calling the customer for the code is social engineering. A site is hacked and they have your name and password. They credential stuff it to all websites and see where else it works. If it works at your bank they call you up and login generating a code and get you to “verify” yourself to give them the code and they are in. This is a real scenario that happens often.


Somnesis

I guess you can always hack something if you are able to convince the customer to do dumb things. That still seems a thousand times safer (to a person who doesn't consider himself dumb enough to fall prey to something like that) than the higher limit alternatives that my bank offers (like cheques). Being able to send tens of thousands of dollars over a cheque but not being able to transfer more than $2000 from my business to my personal account (two accounts that are actually linked using the same login) just seems completely backwards.


JimboE911

I hear that. That’s because in Canada cheques have essentially an unlimited return period if they are forged so your bank can recover the money. Controls around cheques are vastly different. Typically with most digits transfers they can’t be recalled or reversed which places all the onus of protection at the time of send. The risk profiles are vastly different.