>Most banks offer free interac transfers.
Interac transfers aren't proper bank transfers. They go through a payment processor (Interac) and the recipient has to act on an email. They also weren't free when I lived in Canada, but cost around $1-$2. In the UK and other European countries, making a bank transfer is much more straightforward.
The major problem with an Interac transfer, apart from the inconvenience, is that you can't easily prove that anyone received the money, since you're sending the money to an email address (!) rather than a bank account.
>Could be, but I haven't seen a cheque in years.
Checks are still commonly used in Canada (e.g. for paying rent).
>You can definitely get VISA debit cards in Canada.
Debit cards are processed through Interac. Most debit cards also allow processing through the visa credit network for foreign transactions, but not necessarily for domestic online transactions. For example, my TD Canada Trust card was not accepted online by Ikea because it could only be processed domestically through Interac or the visa debit network, neither of which were accepted by any significant number of online merchants at the time. I called TD. Their suggestion was just to "get a credit card" (which wasn't really possible for someone newly-arrived in Canada). That may have changed since 2012, but it's still pretty shockingly bad. In the US and UK, you can use your debit card anywhere you can use a credit card.
If you don't believe me, here's a quote from the "visa debit" Wikipedia article:
> For the dual-network cards, in-person transactions within Canada are processed on the Interac network, but international transactions, as well as online and phone orders through Canadian retailers, are processed through the Visa network.[1][2] (However, Canadian retailers must specifically allow for Visa Debit transactions, even if they already accept Visa credit cards.)[5] "Virtual Visa Debit" works similarly; customers use their existing Interac debit cards for in-person transactions (and Interac Online) in Canada, but are also provided with a secondary "virtual" Visa card (i.e. card number, expiry, and CVV2) which can be used for online and phone transactions (but not point-of-sale, in Canada or internationally).
Only in Canada do you actually have to understand any of this crap to figure out why your card doesn't work.