Canada drafts stablecoin rules with three-day redemption

Canada’s Department of Finance published draft Stablecoin Regulations in the Canada Gazette on Saturday 24 October [1]. They put the Stablecoin Act, which received royal assent in March 2026, into practice: an issuer that is not a financial institution registers with the Bank of Canada and meets rules on redemption, reserves, qualified custodians, reporting and fees [1]. A matching amendment brings payment service providers that perform payment functions with stablecoins inside the Retail Payment Activities Act [1].

An issuer must pay out within three business days of a request, with no minimum amount, a window the department sized to fit both Canadian T+1 settlement and foreign settlement cycles [1]. Redemption fees are capped at 1% of the amount redeemed, and any fee increase needs at least seven days’ notice on the issuer’s website [1]. Issuers may not pay a yield on held balances, while rewards tied to transactions stay allowed [1], the split the desk’s answer on whether stablecoins pay interest walks through. Penalties run up to $1,000,000 for a serious violation and up to $10,000,000 for a very serious one [1].

On the desk’s reading, the payments amendment reaches further than the issuer rules: a Canadian firm that moves stablecoins for its customers would answer to the Bank of Canada as a retail payment service provider, alongside every other firm on the register. Comments are open for 60 days from publication, which runs to 23 December, and the department intends the rules to take effect in the autumn of 2027 [1].

An appeals court voids the Fed’s debit fee cap

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled on Monday 26 October that the Federal Reserve set its debit interchange cap on the wrong costs, and vacated the current 21-cent limit [2]. The panel backed a North Dakota district court ruling from August 2025 [2]. Under the Durbin Amendment, the court found, the Fed may weigh the marginal cost of each transaction but not an issuer’s fixed costs, and the current cap counted fixed authorisation, clearance and settlement costs, network processing fees, fraud prevention and fraud losses [2].

The cap has stood since 2011 at 21 cents plus 0.05% of the transaction, with a one-cent fraud-prevention add-on, and binds only the largest issuers, those at $10 billion and above [2]. The Fed proposed cutting the base to 14.4 cents in October 2023 and has not acted on it since, and a spokesperson had no comment on the ruling [2]. The judges allowed the Fed a proxy for marginal cost, as long as it bears a reasonable relationship to it, but said the board may not “pick a number and hope it is close enough for government work” [2]. The case began in April 2021 with Corner Post, a truck stop in Watford City, North Dakota [2].

Shopping is the first job people give Meta’s Muse agent

Mark Zuckerberg told analysts on Meta’s third-quarter call on Wednesday 21 October that shopping, travel planning included, is the most common task for Muse, the personal agent Meta launched on 8 September [3]. About a quarter of users set it to buy things, and the average purchase is around $200 [3]. About 10 million people have signed up, in the US and Canada only [3]. Muse pays through Stripe’s Link wallet, and in launch week Meta “had to work with Stripe to raise credit limits” because volumes ran above what either company expected [3]. He gave no transaction or payment figures [3].

The same report carries the view from the banks. Cameron Fowler, chief executive of Early Warning Services, said agentic spending is far from ready for mass use, with liability still to be settled, and that almost none of the customer protections people would expect are in place [3]. The desk’s answer on who is liable when an AI agent buys the wrong thing sets out how that responsibility splits under today’s rules. When a customer disputes a $200 order the agent placed, does it land on Meta, on Stripe or on the bank that issued the card?