A consumer group is urgently calling on the federal government to follow other jurisdictions in the U.S and Europe and bring in legislation to stem the slide toward a cashless society.
Only 10 per cent of transactions in Canada today are done using cash, according to Carlos Castiblanco, an economist with the group Option Consommateurs.
“There is a need to protect cash right now before more merchants start refusing [it],” Castiblanco recently told CBC Radio’s Ontario Today.
It’s critical to act now, he added, before retailers begin removing all the infrastructure required to store and maintain physical money.
The main thing that concerns me about a fully cashless society is that the means of buying and selling stuff shifts fully into the hands of the for profit, private company payment processors.
If cash is no longer an option, then ever increasing payment fees can become a growing profit center for those banks, credit card companies and payment processors as they gouge the public worse than they already are.
also need to keep cash around for poor people. when I was homeless 10 years ago if cash wasn’t a thing I would have been well and truly fucked.
You also need to further lower the barrier of entry for simply getting a bank account. Make it so, once again in Ontario at least, your OHIP card is a valid id to open an account. Because if you go cashless and you don’t have a bank account you’ll never get one. costs money to get a valid form of ID here to open one. Hell I know people who don’t even have bank accounts because they can’t afford it. They can’t afford the monthly fee. they either get paid in cash or have somenoe cash their paycheques for them.
isn’t that partially why those who dont want minimum fees look for a credit union that doenst charge minimum fees?
but then you have the hurdle of actually being able to join a credit union. I remember a couple years ago I was trying to help one of my clients get a credit union account (who was homeless but working) and he couldn’t get it. don’t remember the specific reason but I do know we went across the street and was able to open a scotiabank account.
It was Merdian bank so don’t know how good they are. I figuerd the credit union would be easier to work with in his case since like you said there’s no minimum fees, I was wrong.
The hurtles are generally:
- lack of an ID
- lack of a Phone number
- no Address
- the need to buy a share in the credit union to open the account in the first place
Yup. Mastercard, Visa and American Express are about to get much worse on consumers and merchants.
And, y’know, you’ll never be able to buy anything illegal again, even if that’s just a book a la Fahrenheit 451.
The main thing that concerns me about a fully cashless society is that the means of buying and selling stuff shifts fully into the hands of the for profit, private company payment processors.
Not necessarily true. The federal government can and should roll out their own instant payment mechanism under the supervision of the central bank or federal reserve. For reference: the FedNow initiative in the US, FPS in Hong Kong, and PIX in Brazil.
Interac is an aberration and it should be killed by a real public service.
I carry cash and I give it to people in need, I don’t mind cashless payment being the default but at least some of the following things need to happen before we can fully move to that:
- Canada Post needs to open a savings account/credit card so that it is not profit motivated and accessible to disadvantaged people. Most poor people can’t afford the annual fee for cards with decent benefits, and to get it waived you need to have significant deposits with your bank/credit union.
- We need a public option compared to Visa/MC/Amex, even if it’s only usable domestically. Letting a handful of non-Canadian companies make a percentage of all Canadians’ transactions is ridiculous and if there was no cash then they would look to jack up rates to whatever they wanted.
- We need regulations in how credit card companies can charge merchants and customers.
Very well put.
Credit cards are the issue for me. An unnecessary third party skimming money (not to mention data) out of every transaction we make.
I can’t NOT use them though, since the cash back can be too good to pass up. If credit cards were regulated into irrelevance I’d be almost 100% on cash.
But on cash or debit? That’s the thing here. Interac is fine as far as I know and cashless. It’s the credit cards that are sketchy.
Interac AFAIK used to be a nonprofit, but few years back became a for profit corporation. While I’m happy for the option, I’d stick with paper/metal where possible if CCs weren’t a thing.
Yeah, with an okay card the cash backs are just too good to pass up on… literally a couple thousand a year we’d be spitting on between my wife and I just making the purchases we’d have done anyway. I wouldn’t give a crap about going back to cash if it wasn’t for that.
I’m going to go against the grain here. I use cash for everything, because I avoid being trackable as much as humanly possible.
The ONLY place I have used cash in the last year at least has been having a coin for my shopping cart and the local dump only takes cash.
I get 2-3% back on every transaction my credit card and pay it off every month for zero fees.
I find very interesting how Canada doesn’t have a bank controlled by the government that can provide affordable services.
E-transfer is also something I think should be maintained by the government like Brazil’s Pix. I’d happily welcome Open Finance as well, but that might be harder.
Reminds me of this article of Yanis Varoufakis : Who’s Afraid of Central Bank Digital Currencies?
Muggers agree.