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Using an exclusive data set of payment times for retail transactions made in Canada, I show that cash is the most time-efficient method of payment (MOP) when compared with payments by debit and credit cards. I model payment efficiency using Cox proportional hazard models, accounting for consumer choice of MOP.

Many central banks are contemplating whether to issue central bank digital currency. This piece explores the implications as well as potential motivators of such a step.

This paper examines the experience of Sweden with government notes and private bank notes to determine how well the Swedish experience corresponds to that of Canada and the United States. Sweden is important to study because it has had government notes in circulation for more than 350 years, and it had government notes before private bank notes.

The emergence of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and the underlying blockchain and distribution ledger technology have attracted significant attention. These developments have raised the possibility of considerable impacts on the financial system and perhaps the wider economy.

Cash is the preferred method of payment for small value transactions generally less than $25. We provide insight to this finding with a new theoretical model that characterizes and compares consumers’ costs of paying with cash to paying with cards for each transaction.

Merchants universally accept cash. Consumers widely hold cash but also carry debit and credit cards. The cost of using a method of payment has only a small influence on which method consumers use. Large merchants accept all payments, while only two-thirds of small and medium-sized businesses accept credit cards. Merchants report that credit cards are the costliest payment method compared with cash and debit cards. However, costs are not the only consideration. Merchant acceptance of credit accounts for the many con-sumers that want to use credit cards. This interaction between consumers and merchants is known as network externalities.

The Bank of Canada made changes to several of the tools that make up its framework for operations and liquidity provision. These changes came about after a comprehensive re-view of the framework and are designed to help the Bank better achieve its objectives of reinforcing the target for the overnight rate and supporting the well-functioning of Cana-dian financial markets under normal market conditions.

We investigate the risks and opportunities to the mandates of central banks arising from fintech developments.

Monetary policy implementation could, in theory, be constrained by deeply negative rates since overnight market participants may have an incentive to invest in cash rather than lend to other participants.

This report describes a joint endeavour between public and private sectors to explore a wholesale payment system based on distributed ledger technology (DLT). They find that a stand-alone DLT system is unlikely to be as beneficial as a centralized payment system in terms of core operating costs; however, it could increase financial system efficiency as a result of integration with the broader financial market infrastructure.