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In a competitive sales environment, merchants are compelled to offer consumers the option of paying for goods and services using a variety of payment methods, including cash, debit card, or credit card. Each method entails different costs and benefits to merchants. To better understand the costs of accepting retail payments, the Bank of Canada surveyed over 500 Canadian merchants and found that most consider cash the least costly. This article investigated this perception by calculating the variable costs per transaction of accepting different means of payment. The findings are that costs for each payment method vary by merchant and transaction value, with debit cards the least costly payment for a broad cross-section of merchants.

We propose a model to understand low observed migration rates by considering the interaction between location and wealth decisions. We look at different policies and find that temporary moving vouchers only slightly increase welfare, while lower housing regulations can decrease the welfare gap by lowering house prices nationwide.

This supervisory policy outlines the retail payment activity metrics that payment service providers must report as part of the annual reporting form.

This supervisory policy outlines the retail payment activity metrics that payment service providers must report at registration.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney discusses the breakdown in trust in global banking and what is required to rebuild it.

In this article, the author reviews the factors behind the recent evolution of liquidity in the market for Government of Canada (GoC) securities. He finds that liquidity has been supported by changes in the structure of the market, notably the introduction and increasing size of benchmark bond issues. He also notes that while the GoC bond market has generally benefited from changes in market structure, liquidity in the treasury bill market has decreased since the mid-1990s, largely because of the declining supply of these securities. This article also presents some comparisons of liquidity in the government securities markets of other industrialized countries and finds that liquidity in the Canadian market appears to compare favourably with all but the large U.S. Treasury market.

This supplementary material is intended to provide an overview of the Safeguarding end-user funds guideline and summarizes a payment service provider’s (PSP) requirements for safeguarding end-user funds. It also includes scope considerations and a list of questions to help PSPs assess and achieve these requirements.

How do “cooling measures” in the housing market—policies aimed to stabilize prices—affect the market? We use a structural model of housing demand and price competition among developers to evaluate China’s home purchase restriction policies implemented in 2010–11.

Across the world's major economies, addressing the failures of banking ranks among the highest policy priorities. In the harsh glare of the current financial turmoil, it is clear that many banks outside of Canada were either not doing their jobs or were doing them in ways that created enormous risks.

The primary focus of this paper is to study conflict of interest in the brokerage market. Brokers face a conflict of interest when the commissions they receive from investors differ from the costs imposed by different trading venues.