Thank you, and good afternoon.

My name is Meg McKee and I am the executive vice-president, Canadian credit card payments, loyalty and personal lending at TD. I am pleased to be with you today to represent TD where I have been leading Canadian credit cards since I joined in early 2022. Prior to joining TD, I spent 20 years with Amex Canada.

During my time working in Canadian credit cards, there have been important evolutions and changes in the competitive dynamics of the Canadian credit card market. First, from a consumer's perspective, over time there has been an ever-increasing number of credit card types available, which have their own combinations of features and benefits for consumers. Canadian consumers have very healthy competition in the credit card offerings that are available to them.

TD is a major credit card issuer in Canada. We are proud of our offerings, which include partnerships with Amazon, Starbucks, Aeroplan and Expedia, as well as through the My TD Rewards platform.

There have been multiple rounds of public policy discussions led by governments about credit card acceptance fees and interchange rates over the past two decades. These discussions, under governments of different stripes, have focused largely on reducing card acceptance costs for merchants. As the committee knows, interchange and assessment fees are set by the credit card networks and not credit card issuers like the representatives of the banks that are before you today, which is why it was very appropriate that the first companies that this committee heard from were the credit card networks that set the rates in question.

Canada's credit card ecosystem is important to individual Canadians, to merchants and to its financial ecosystem participants. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss this ecosystem with you.

Thank you.