Please add data points: making a list of Canadian banks and how they fail to deliver services to people using VoIP

General
1

There must be many hundred thousand Canadians who are out of the country for reasons other than travel, and surely many of them need to access their Canadian bank and credit card accounts from time to time while abroad. And if you, like myself, are among the latter group and use voip.ms as your provider, I would appreciate if you could let us know how your Canadian banking services work (or don’t work) while you are abroad, by adding related data points to the list I am starting here - thanks in advance!

Here are my initial data points:

“Big 6 banks”

BMO - SMS, phone calls, and email used to work for the delivery of OTPs at some time in the past, but SMS and phone calls have not been working for at leat two years already (BMO has an interesting failure mode: OTPs will still be sent via SMS and phone calls, but the bank’s interface will not accept them); email had been the fallback option for about two years, but BMO removed the option to receive OTPs via email in August or September 2025 (Score: 0 out of 3)

CIBC - SMS and phone calls to deliver OTP used to work at some time in the past, but delivery via SMS stopped quite a while ago. As of this year delivery bis phone is not working any longer, either. The option of using email is not available. (Score 0 out of 3)

RBC - SMS, phone calls, and email used to work for the delivery of OTPs at some time in the past, but the option of using email was removed a while ago while delivery via SMS stopped, as well. As of this year delivery OTP delivery by phone is not working any longer, either (Score: 0 out of 3)

"Online only banks”

Simplii - SMS and phone calls to deliver OTP used to work until recently, but delivery via phone is now not working any longer. The option of using email is not available. (Score: 1 out of 3)

“Credit card companies”

Home Trust Visa - SMS and phone calls to deliver OTP used to work until recently, but delivery via phone is now not working any longer. The option of using email is not available. (Score: 1 out of 3)

MBNA Mastercard - SMS and phone calls to deliver OTP used to work until recently, but delivery via phone is now not working any longer. The option of using email is not available. (Score: 1 out of 3)

President’s Choice Mastercard - SMS and phone calls to deliver OTP used to work until recently, but delivery via phone is now not working any longer. The option of using email is not available. (Score: 1 out of 3)

Somewhat related threads in this forum;

April 2025: What are peoples’ experiences like with short number verifications?

Active as of February 2026: Fix your SMS service

2

I replied to the wrong thread as it was intended for yours so here it is again:

Even abroad I use my cell phone for verifications (why not? SMS can swim) and sometimes email, so I wouldn’t know of these issues some have, but I would definitely blame these issues with SMS on the internet for probably many reasons and suggest that you just use your mobile for SMS like most do and use your app for voice calls and for non essential SMS.

3

Update:

RBC - SMS by phone works with a VOIP number that is registered as “cell”but not with one registered as “landline.

Updated score: 1 out of 3

More importantly, several banks (CIBC + Simplii, TD, Scotiabank) already let customers register a foreign phone number (applicable to many, but not all, countries) - surely the remaining banks (BMO, RBC, National) will do that, as well, sooner or later.

4

Sometimes it really is just the banks playing games. When they ask for my cell number, I give them my VoIP number. Some days they accept it with no issue, other days they argue about it, but once they finally put the VoIP number into the cell phone field, it works. It all comes down to the provider they’re using on their end. I had Cellular One for my actual cell phone, and they couldn’t deliver verification SMS at all until they were bought by AT&T. Meanwhile, during that entire time, my VoIP number handled those same verification texts with no problem.

5

Update:

Home Trust Visa also offers the option of having OTP sent to a foreign cell phone number.

6

Update: I switched some numbers around and got most financial services to work again (all now score 2 out of 3) - the only exception is BMO where nothing works.

7

The “registered as cell vs landline” detail from the RBC update is the core of it. Banks (and most OTT/fintech verifiers) depend on how the number is classified in the carrier databases their verification vendor queries — and that classification is not always accurate, nor is it static.

A few things worth knowing if you are relying on VoIP numbers for bank/2FA verifications:

  • Line type is an attribute of the number, not of your provider. The same VoIP DID can appear as “mobile”, “fixed line”, or “VoIP” depending on which database is being queried, when it was last updated, and whether the number was ported. Ported numbers are the messy ones — a number that started life as a landline and now terminates to VoIP can carry stale classification for a long time.

  • Verification vendors differ. Banks rarely query telco data directly; they use a verification/threat-intel vendor, and those vendors use different underlying data sources. That is why RBC can accept one of your numbers and reject another — the site’s vendor returned a different classification per number.

  • You can check the classification yourself before you give the number to a bank. A line-type/carrier lookup (HLR-style data or an operator lookup API) will show you what the current classification looks like — mobile vs landline vs VoIP — so you know what the bank’s verifier is likely to see. If you plan to use a VoIP DID for 2FA-heavy services, checking the line-type view of that number in advance can save you the “works one day, rejected the next” cycle.

You are effectively acceptance-testing the banks’ verification stacks — it is a great dataset, and the pattern (same number, different classification per vendor) is exactly the limitation worth documenting.

8

I recently switched my main phone number from cell to voip

I was just login in to this forum to ask, why I’m not receiving my 2FA.

Right now I’m trying to login into walmart.ca and first they sent me 2FA by email, that worked but to purchase, they asked me to 2FA by SMS, but I never get the message !

So there’s a problem ? What’s the fix ?

How do you get the DID metadata to show whatever the

9

@foneping That is interesting and useful information - it also explains to some extent why switching numbers around (changing which one I designated as cell phone number and which one as home phone number) helped in some cases. The other part of that equation is this: the banks I know don’t give me a choice of registering two cell phone numbers - they offer the options “cell” and “home phone” and in some case in addition “business phone” (which comes with a field for an extension and, I suppose, is also considered a landline phone). Following from that, when it comes to sending OTPs, they will offer to send an SMS to the number I entered into the “cell” field and to make a call to the number I entered in the “home” field. This is why in some cases switching numbers around resulted in me getting at least either an SMS on one number or a call on another number to work (there is also a case where I can get both an SMS and a call). So with one exception (BMO) I can do online banking now even when I am in another country. :

10

I have a VOIP number as the 2FA on TD. It used to be PublicMoblie number before I moved it to Voip though.

The only issue is when I needed to use it to verify identity, the TD person would send an SMS that would break when received because of the length, and I couldn’t see the code at the end.

But for 2FA sms it works ok, those messages are short enough to be displayed in full and you can see the code.