Canada ranks in the top 3 in cashless payment societies

As the trend towards a cashless society continues, Canadians are among those leading the trend.MasterCard recently released a report named “Cashless Journey” that ranked Canada as the third most cashless country in the world, with Belgium ranking first and France second.

“The increased adoption of electronic payments has propelled Canada to leapfrog other countries and secure a top spot as nearly cashless.  In other words, Canadian's are comfortable with and prefer using other forms of payment and have been at it for years!” - said Betty K. DeVita, President, MasterCard Canada.

According to the report, Canadian non-cash payments make up a total of 90% of all consumer payments. In addition to cash only accounting for 10% of all payments, it also only accounts for about 40% of the number of transactions in Canada.

Much of this success can be attributed to our early adoption of EMV Chip & PIN, Contactless Payments like PayPass Tap & Go™ and Visa Paywave, our modern payments infrastructure including electronic funds transfer and NFC.

While Canadians continue to adopt cashless forms of payments, many payments providers are currently testing new mobile payments solutions that are likely to be available in 2014. We think Canadians will be ready to adopt this technology, as smartphone usage increases in Canada.