7 Signs Canada Is Becoming A Cashless Society

In 2007 the Canadian government stopped allowing payment of taxes in cash at government service centers. 

In 2010 Passport Canada followed suit. 

In 2011 56% of Canadians polled said they were happy to live in a bankster-controlled cashless society so the country killed the penny in 2012 and the Royal Canadian Mint started pimping the “MintChip” as a new form of electronic payment that will be “better than cash.” The Mint ended the program in 2014 but the Great White North is still on track to be a cashless society in the coming years.




7. Canada is tops for paying by card

Nowhere do people pay with plastic more than in Canada. An RBS report from 2011 found that paying by plastic -- credit, debit and bank cards -- amounts to 40 per cent of transactions, on average, across world economies. But the rate in Canada was 68 per cent, making the country the world leader in plastic payment.

6. We got rid of the penny

Observers in the U.S. and elsewhere declared Canada a trailblazer when the Harper government announced in its 2012 budget this year that it's eliminating the penny. Canada isn't the first to do this -- Australia got rid of its penny decades ago, for instance, and various currencies around the world often eliminate their lowest denominations due to inflation. But the decision to kill the copper coin is nonetheless a sign that physical currency is less important to the economy than it used to be -- and central banks are beginning to notice the costs involved with it.

5. Our dollar bills are going high-tech

Even our paper money is turning plastic. The Bank of Canada unveiled Canada's first plastic bill -- a new $100 -- last fall. The $50 bill went plastic this past March, and the $20 followed quickly in May. The plastic bills are meant to be more durable and include a variety of new security features, including a translucent strip. But they've already been through a few controversies: One involved the discovery that the new plastic bills may melt in heat; another involved a controversial decision by the BoC to eliminate an "Asian-looking" person from the original design of the $100 bill.

4. The Mint is going digital

Perhaps the elimination of the penny made the Royal Canadian Mint realize that the age of physical coins may be coming to an end. The agency responsible for Canada's coins launched a new project this spring, called "MintChip," in which it's researching the creation of a "digital coin" shoppers could use for transactions under $10. On its face, the idea is similar to BitCoin, the virtual currency, but when a national mint develops something like this, it's a clear sign we're into a new era when it comes to money.

3. Canadians are ready to go cashless (apparently)

A study carried out by Leger Marketing for PayPal earlier this year found that 71 per cent of Canadians are comfortable with never having to use cash to make purchases, up a stunning 44 percentage points from 2011, when only 27 per cent of Canadians said the same. We're going to go out on a limb and suggest this survey could be somewhat unreliable, but another survey, carried out by RBC this spring, found that three-quarters of women and two-thirds of men typically carry less than $50 in their wallet and rely on electronic transactions for purchases.

More than 70 per cent of Canadians ready to go "cashless"

Women Take Lead Towards a Cashless Society: RBC/Shoppers Drug Mart Poll
Majority of women carry less than $50, men twice as likely to carry larger amounts

2. Interac

As Wired points out in this gushing article, Canada's Interac system is a world-leading digital currency system. Nothing like it exists in the U.S., where you can pay by debit card at the cash register or pay user fees at a bank machine. While other countries have proprietary trading systems owned by banks, forcing withdrawal fees on customers and costs on retailers, the not-for-profit Interac costs so little it overtook cash as the preferred method of payment for Canadians all the way back in 2000.

Canada Will Beat U.S. to Cashless Economy


1. Interac for the mobile era

The Canadian Bankers association is working on a unified, standardized system for smartphone payments in Canada -- something that could well evolve into an "Interac for the smartphone age." Experts say that before smartphone payment can become standard, the phones themselves have to be equipped with Near Field Communication which allows phones to be swiped near readers to complete a transaction. Analysts say that technology is only a few years off.