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. This paper...

We present a policy framework for electronic money and payments. The framework poses a set of positive questions related to the areas of responsibility of central banks: payments systems, monetary policy and financial stability. The questions are posed to four broad forms of e-money: privately...

The use of bank notes in Canada for payments has declined consistently for some time, and similar trends are evident in other countries. This has led some observers to predict a cashless society in the future. This paper considers the implications of the abandonment of the use of cash in the...

As the sole issuer of bank notes, the Bank of Canada conducts Methods-of-Payment (MOP) surveys to obtain a detailed and representative snapshot of Canadian payment choices, with a focus on cash usage. The 2017 MOP Survey is the third iteration. This paper finds that the overall cash volume and...

The market for cryptoassets has exploded in size in the 10 years since bitcoin was launched. The technology underlying cryptoassets, blockchain, has also been held up as a technology that promises to transform entire industries. In this paper we examine what is new about cryptoassets and their...

The Canadian overnight repo market persistently shows signs of latent funding pressure around month-end periods. Both the overnight repo rate and Bank of Canada liquidity provision tend to rise in these windows. This paper proposes three non-mutually exclusive hypotheses to explain this...

We present results from the 2022 Methods-of-Payment Survey, including updated payment shares based on a three-day shopping diary. We highlight long-term trends in cash holdings, management and use observed across results from previous surveys in 2009, 2013 and 2017. We also review recent trends...

We present results from the 2021 Methods-of-Payment (MOP) Survey, including updated payment shares based on a three-day shopping diary. We highlight long-term trends observed across previous MOP surveys from 2009, 2013 and 2017. We also review patterns of the management and use of cash, the...

The economic lockdowns that began in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to an unparalleled level of financial market disruption. Investors sought liquidity by selling financial assets and drawing down loans and credit lines. The speed, scale and one-way nature of these...

In April 2022, the Bank of Canada announced that it would continue to use a floor system to implement monetary policy by providing a sufficiently large quantity of settlement balances to enable the overnight repo rate to trade at close to the deposit rate. In contrast, the Bank's guiding...