In a survey carried out by the Bank of Canada it is suggested that Canadians are now using cash for less than half of all transactions that they carry out.
Shoppers are now reaching more for their credit cards and new technology that allows them to just tap their card and pay instead.
The research carried out by the central bank’s Gerald Stuber, Kim Huynh and Ben Fung was included as part of their spring edition of the Bank of Canada’s review that was released on Thursday.
“Innovation in retail point of sale and online payment systems continues to be significant, particularly in enhancing the speed and convenience of payment process for lower value transactions, an area where cash still dominates” wrote the articles authors.
“Contactless credit cards, in particular, are seeing strong growth in use, while Interac debit cards with the tap and go feature are at a relatively early stage of market development.” In a survey carried out in 2013 regarding method of payment it noted that use of credit cards increased by almost 31% this is comparison to just over 19% in 2009.
Whereas use of debit cards begun to slip, going from nearly 25% to 21%. As for cash payments these account for around 44% of all transactions taking place, going down by about 10% from the review carried out in 2009.
Use of cash is much lower in younger people, but people in all age groups that were surveyed saw the use of bills and coins slip below 50% in relation of the number of transactions they performed.
But cash had managed to hold its grown as a total percentage of the value of payments at around 23%.
The report also noted that the total value of cash transactions to take place that were worth more than $50 had actually increased in comparison to 2009.