Marie-Hélène is a Senior Economist. Her primary area of research is applied microeconometrics. In the field of retail payments, she conducts research evaluating the impact of payment innovations on cash usage.
The 2025 Methods-of-Payment Survey provides insights into how Canadians pay for their day-to-day purchases and how they use cash (i.e. banknotes and coins). While contactless card payments dominate in-person transactions, most Canadians maintain favourable views on cash and still hold and use it. They are also increasingly adopting mobile payments.
We present core findings from the 2024 Methods-of-Payment Survey, highlighting results from both the survey questionnaire and three-day shopping diary. Although cash holdings have increased in nominal terms, we find that cash usage remains unchanged since 2020. Mobile and other alternative payment methods continue to grow in importance.
The Bitcoin Omnibus Survey is an important tool for monitoring Canadians’ awareness and ownership of bitcoin and other cryptoassets over time. In this paper, we present data highlights from the 2023 survey.
We present a two-stage model of mobile phone and mobile payment usage that controls for selectivity. This reveals unobserved factors that work against having a mobile phone and toward mobile paying. Therefore, people who are unable to acquire or choose not to own a mobile device might have unmet payment needs.
This paper studies Canadians’ access to cash using the geographical distribution of automated banking machines (ABMs). During the pandemic, there have been no sustained adverse effects on cash accessibility.
In this paper, we examine trends in Canadian ownership of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from 2016 to 2020 using data from surveys conducted by the Bank of Canada.
