The use of bank notes in Canada for payments has declined consistently for some time, and similar trends are evident in other countries. This has led some observers to predict a cashless society in the future. This paper considers the implications of the abandonment of the use of cash in the...

This note uses industry data and a unique dataset of small and medium-sized merchants to provide insights into the acquirer-merchant market in Canada. Three main findings are presented. First, smaller merchants pay their acquirer more for every dollar of card payment than larger merchants....

Our paper contributes to the discussion about the utility of stablecoins for retail payments through an objective, evidence-based approach that compares stablecoins with traditional retail payment methods. The paper also provides insights that could be useful in the design of central bank...

With the rapid digitization of financial transactions, central banks have given considerable focus in recent years to the research and development of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). While CBDCs could offer several advantages, there are concerns about end-user privacy. Traditional...

Cash is being used less and less for making payments in many countries, including Canada and Sweden, which might suggest that cash will eventually disappear. However, cash in circulation in most countries, including Canada, has been stable for decades, and even rising in recent years. In...

This paper presents OVer, a framework designed to automatically analyze the behaviour of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols when subjected to a "skewed" oracle input. OVer firstly performs a symbolic analysis on the given contract and constructs a model of constraints. Then, the framework...

A well-functioning monetary system is characterized by public and private forms of money that exchange at par as value flows freely between them. This is essential for efficient transacting and contracting in a market economy. A relevant retail public money - whether in the form of cash, a...

Providing bank notes is one of the Bank of Canada’s core functions. The Bank is therefore interested in whether cash is adequately distributed across society, and this also influences the Bank’s thinking on issuing a central bank digital currency. We provide a perspective on these issues by...

In this paper, we discuss whether the ability of individuals to convert commercial bank money (i.e., bank deposits) into central bank money is fundamentally important for the monetary system. This is a significant question since the use of cash - the only form of central bank money that the...

Chen et al. (2021) show that almost one-third of First Nations band offices in Canada are within 1 kilometre (km) of an automated banking machine (ABM) or financial institution (FI) branch and more than half are within 5 km. Further, over three-quarters of band offices are within 20 km of an ABM...