A consumer group is urgently calling on the federal government to follow other jurisdictions in the U.S and Europe and bring in legislation to stem the slide toward a cashless society.
Only 10 per cent of transactions in Canada today are done using cash, according to Carlos Castiblanco, an economist with the group Option Consommateurs.
“There is a need to protect cash right now before more merchants start refusing [it],” Castiblanco recently told CBC Radio’s Ontario Today.
It’s critical to act now, he added, before retailers begin removing all the infrastructure required to store and maintain physical money.
Credit cards are the issue for me. An unnecessary third party skimming money (not to mention data) out of every transaction we make.
I can’t NOT use them though, since the cash back can be too good to pass up. If credit cards were regulated into irrelevance I’d be almost 100% on cash.
But on cash or debit? That’s the thing here. Interac is fine as far as I know and cashless. It’s the credit cards that are sketchy.
Interac AFAIK used to be a nonprofit, but few years back became a for profit corporation. While I’m happy for the option, I’d stick with paper/metal where possible if CCs weren’t a thing.
Yeah, with an okay card the cash backs are just too good to pass up on… literally a couple thousand a year we’d be spitting on between my wife and I just making the purchases we’d have done anyway. I wouldn’t give a crap about going back to cash if it wasn’t for that.