Resiliency of the Wholesale Payment System

Resiliency of the Wholesale Payment System (RWPS) is a public-private partnership led by the Bank of Canada to promote stability in Canada’s financial system. Find out more about who we are and what we do.

Background

The Bank has a mandate to promote the stability and operational resilience of our financial system. A cyber attack on any part of the financial system has the potential to cause a systemic event that could ultimately disrupt Canada’s economy.

A goal of the Bank’s Cyber Security Strategy is to expand financial sector resilience through collaboration and partnerships.

About RWPS

RWPS’s mandate focuses on enhancing the collective cyber resilience of the wholesale payment system by increasing and exercising cyber security capabilities related to:

• prevention and detection
• coordination and response
• recovery from cyber incidents

RWPS complements the Canadian Financial Sector Resiliency Group (CFRG)—a forum for Canada’s systemically important financial institutions and regulators to coordinate responses to systemic operational issues in the financial sector, including cyber incidents.

Structure and participants

Led by the Bank, this group is a collaboration with Canadian financial institutions and Payments Canada. The RWPS program partners include:

• Payments Canada–A financial market infrastructure operator responsible for operating payment clearing and settlement systems in Canada
• Canadian financial institutions with significant volumes of annual transactions in the Canadian wholesale payment system:
• Bank of Montreal
• Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
• Desjardins
• National Bank of Canada
• Royal Bank of Canada
• Scotiabank
• TD Bank Group

RWPS activities are coordinated by the Bank’s Cyber Security Division.