Collect Canadian Dollars from your customers using Interac Auto Deposit. Blaaiz configures a dedicated email address for your business — when anyone sends an Interac e-Transfer to that email, the funds land in your CAD wallet automatically and you receive a webhook with the sender’s email so you can attribute the payment.
This is one of the most common flows our merchants build, and the one that causes the most confusion. This guide walks through the full setup, the payment flow, and how to reliably match incoming payments to your customers.
How it works
The key concept: Two emails
This is where merchants get confused. There are two different emails in this flow, and they serve very different purposes:
| Email | Who owns it | Purpose |
|---|
Auto Deposit email (e.g. payments@yourbusiness.com) | Your business | Configured on Blaaiz. This is the email your customers send money to. |
Sender’s Interac email (e.g. alice@gmail.com) | Your customer | The email attached to your customer’s bank account. This is how you identify who sent the payment. |
source_information.collection_email. You match that email against your stored records to know which customer the funds belong to.
Step-by-step setup
Before you can receive any Interac payments, a Super Admin must configure an Auto Deposit email in the Blaaiz dashboard:
- Log in to business.blaaiz.com
- Navigate to your CAD wallet
- Click Interac Auto Deposit
- Add your preferred email address (e.g.
payments@yourbusiness.com)
The setup goes through three statuses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|
PENDING | Request submitted, awaiting review |
PROCESSING | Blaaiz is configuring the Auto Deposit |
ACTIVE | Ready to receive funds |
Without an active Auto Deposit email, Interac funds will not reflect in your CAD wallet even if someone sends money to your business.
2. Collect your customer’s Interac email
Before your customer sends money, you need to know which email they’ll send from. Add a step in your app’s funding flow to collect this:
- Ask the customer: “What email is registered with your bank for Interac e-Transfer?”
- Store this email in your database, mapped to the customer’s account
A customer’s Interac email is the email their Canadian bank has on file for e-Transfers. It may be different from their login email on your platform.
3. Display your Auto Deposit email
Show the customer your business Auto Deposit email and instruct them to send an Interac e-Transfer to that address from their banking app. Since Auto Deposit is enabled, they won’t need to answer a security question — the funds deposit automatically.
4. Handle the collection webhook
When the payment arrives, Blaaiz credits your CAD wallet and sends a collection webhook to your configured collection_url. The payload looks like this:
{
"message": "Transaction Completed",
"transaction_id": "20580e50-1b32-40a6-aa46-ac8e795b3zas",
"transaction_reference": "CA1MR6ahQBCJ",
"transaction_status": "SUCCESSFUL",
"transaction_fee": 0.0,
"transaction_amount_without_fee": 20.0,
"transaction_amount": 20.0,
"transaction_currency": "CAD",
"payee_collection_email": "payments@yourbusiness.com",
"source_information": {
"collection_email": "alice@gmail.com"
},
"event_id": "9d46a6c7-fbb4-48f0-912c-4f9611fe5844",
"type": "collection"
}
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|
payee_collection_email | Your business Auto Deposit email (the destination) |
source_information.collection_email | The sender’s Interac email — use this to identify which customer sent the payment |
transaction_amount | How much CAD was received |
transaction_status | Must be SUCCESSFUL before you allocate funds |
5. Match the sender and allocate funds
In your webhook handler:
- Extract
source_information.collection_email from the payload
- Look up which customer owns that email in your database
- Credit that customer’s balance in your system
Webhook received
└── source_information.collection_email = "alice@gmail.com"
└── Lookup: alice@gmail.com → User #1234 (Alice)
└── Credit Alice's CAD balance: +20.00 CAD
Recommended database design
To reliably match Interac payments, maintain a mapping between your users and their Interac emails:
users
├── id
├── name
├── email (platform login email)
└── ...
user_interac_emails
├── id
├── user_id (FK → users.id)
├── email (unique) ← the Interac email from their bank
└── created_at
Testing in development
Use the Simulate Interac webhook endpoint to test your integration without sending real money:
curl -X POST https://api-dev.blaaiz.com/api/external/mock/simulate-webhook/interac \
-H "x-blaaiz-api-key: YOUR_DEV_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"interac_email": "alice@gmail.com",
"amount": 50.00
}'
collection_url with the interac_email as the source_information.collection_email. Use it to verify your email matching logic works before going live.
The simulate endpoint is only available in the development environment. It returns a 400 error in production.
Common pitfalls
Customer sends from the wrong email
If a customer sends money from an Interac email that isn’t in your system, you’ll receive the webhook but won’t be able to match it to a user. Build a fallback flow — flag the payment for manual review and reach out to the customer.
Confusing the two emails
The Auto Deposit email (payments@yourbusiness.com) is yours. The source_information.collection_email is theirs. Don’t mix them up when matching.
Not collecting the email upfront
If you don’t ask the customer for their Interac email before they send money, you have no way to attribute the payment when it arrives. Always collect it first.
Customer sends from a fintech app instead of their bank
This is a common gotcha. If your customer sends the Interac e-Transfer from a fintech app (e.g. Wealthsimple, KOHO, etc.) instead of directly from their bank, the fintech may route the payment through its own banking infrastructure. When this happens, the source_information.collection_email in the webhook will show the fintech’s email (e.g. interac@externalfintech.com) rather than your customer’s personal email. You’ll receive the funds, but you won’t be able to automatically match the payment to a customer.
To handle this:
- Warn your customers in your UI to send from their personal bank account, not a fintech app.
- Build a manual review queue for unmatched payments — when
collection_email doesn’t match any known customer, flag the transaction for your ops team.
- Consider asking customers to include a reference or their account ID in the Interac e-Transfer message field as a secondary identifier (though not all banks display this reliably).
APIs used
