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A mechanism (Interac) in the Canadian banking system permits people to send amounts less than $3,000 over email.

This also works for transferring funds between two accounts held by the same person at two financial institutions.

It works by using an email address to identify the recipient.

If the same email is entered for two bank accounts, where would money transferred to that email be deposited?

Can the same email be used for transfers at two accounts? Will the "system" enable an absent-minded user to register the same email address for two accounts?

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    This feels a bit off-topic as it's more of a product/service question. Someone here might be familiar, but probably to get a definitive answer you should ask the bank/vendor. Whenever I transfer money I get to choose which of my accounts it comes from, multiple accounts is not likely something anyone involved in banking would overlook.
    – Hart CO
    Commented Mar 25, 2023 at 4:37
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    @HartCO This is very much on-topic. It is about banking, and it is not asking for a product or service recommendation.
    – Ben Miller
    Commented Mar 25, 2023 at 11:22
  • @BenMiller-RememberMonica I didn't say it was asking for a recommendation, I should have said it could be closed as written, not that it was off-topic. It didn't initially indicate a specific vendor/bank which are necessary to answer the question (though the vendor part seems to have been sorted out). Your answer points to a FAQ for a specific company that says to check with the specific bank. In any case, I didn't vote to close or downvote, just put my non-answer suggestion to check with the bank/vendor in a comment.
    – Hart CO
    Commented Mar 25, 2023 at 16:35

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If you want to use the Interac e-Transfer auto-deposit feature, you can only associate one bank account with an e-mail address. From Interac’s FAQ (emphasis mine):

How many email addresses can I register for Interac e-Transfer Autodeposit?

You can register multiple email addresses per account for Interac e-Transfer Autodeposit. However, once an email is registered [for Autodeposit], it can’t be used again with another account. The exact number of email addresses that can be registered for the Autodeposit feature per account depends on each financial institution. Check with your participating bank or credit union for further details.

However, Chris W. Rea and Kate Gregory have both confirmed for us in the comments below that if you are not using the auto-deposit feature, you can associate multiple bank accounts with one e-mail address. In that case, when you receive money from someone, you are notified of the transfer and can choose to which of your accounts you would like to deposit the money.

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    If the receiver doesn't enable Autodeposit, they can choose which of their registered bank accounts to deposit the money into. The accounts can be at different banks. I have two accounts at different banks using the exact same email address for Interac e-Transfer, and I get to choose the destination account for each and every e-Transfer I receive. I must manually choose to receive the transfer and Interac presents a page asking me to which financial institution. I added a remark above in brackets.
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented Mar 25, 2023 at 12:26
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    Important for those unfamiliar with Interac to know this: autodeposit is entirely optional. Some people have it on and some people don't. If you don't, then you could have any number of accounts associated with one email address.
    – Kate Gregory
    Commented Mar 25, 2023 at 23:59
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    Nice. Ok, but you address the case of someone who has too many email accounts. What about the case of someone who has too many bank accounts (not just recently, but for some time, and out of bank failure paranoia, which now seems prudent)? It would appear that as long as auto-deposit is not enabled, the same email can be used for multiple accounts (with the user queried for the destination account when depositing), but that Interac will not allow auto-deposit to be set for the same email at two accounts. Can you confirm?
    – Sam7919
    Commented Mar 26, 2023 at 0:23
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    @Sam The FAQ I referenced confirmed that if you are using auto-deposit, you can only use one account per e-mail address. Chris and Kate (two of my favorite Canadians) both confirmed that if you are not using auto-deposit, you can have multiple accounts tied to one e-mail address.
    – Ben Miller
    Commented Mar 26, 2023 at 11:06

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