Canada has had Interac email money transfers for around a decade, without any lock-in to a particular "wallet service" or email host.

This is so late to the market as to be irrelevant.

interac is not free, this is

I'll bet you a shiny nickel that Canadians will still stick with Interac rather than a credit-card based Google Virtual Wallet based solution.

Credit-card based solutions have monumentally failed to gain traction vs interac for ages.

As a counterpoint, I never use Interac for payments precisely because I can use my credit card and get all the benefits that offers: rewards, zero liability, deferred payment, etc. The only place I use debit is at Tim Horton's if I don't have cash as they don't accept Visa.