What is Interac debit?
Interac is Canada's debit network, used when a customer pays at the counter with a bank debit card by chip and PIN or by tap (Interac Flash).
When a Canadian customer pays with a bank card rather than a credit card, the payment usually runs on Interac. The money comes straight out of the customer's chequing or savings account. There is no credit line and no monthly statement, so for the customer it works like cash, and for the merchant it is usually cheaper to accept than credit.
There are two ways to pay. Chip and PIN: the customer inserts the card and enters a PIN. Tap, branded Interac Flash: the customer taps the card or a phone for smaller amounts, up to a limit set by the card issuer, after which the terminal asks for chip and PIN. Interac also runs e-Transfer, which is a different product used to send money between bank accounts and is not taken on the card terminal.
Interac is generally priced as a flat fee per transaction, while credit is a percentage of the sale. On small tickets the difference is minor; on large tickets debit is usually much cheaper. Card surcharges are a credit card practice and are not applied to Interac debit. To accept Interac you need a terminal and a processor that support it, which almost every Canadian processor does.
In SeroPOS the cashier picks Debit or Credit as the card type, and the amount goes to the active terminal. Global Payments, Global Pay Cloud and Moneris Go terminals all take Interac. On Moneris, the terminal's Interac debit surcharge setting shows in Terminal Behaviour, synced from Moneris. Debit and credit show as separate lines on the DSR. E-Transfer can be added as a custom payment method.
Two sales at a Toronto cafe: a $6.50 latte paid by Interac Flash and a $480.00 espresso machine paid by Interac chip and PIN. Both are debit. If the processor charges a flat fee of a few cents per debit transaction, the $480.00 sale costs about the same to accept as the latte, whereas on credit it might cost several dollars.