February 10, 2021
Changing how we pay
Deputy Governor Timothy Lane discusses how the pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of the economy.
Payment clearing and settlement systems
-
-
February 10, 2021
Payments innovation beyond the pandemic
Deputy Governor Timothy Lane talks about how the Bank of Canada is contributing to the modernization of our payments ecosystem, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to make payments more convenient for all Canadians. -
Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in Canada and the United States
Although credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept than cash or debit cards, merchants typically pass through their costs evenly to all customers. Along with consumer card rewards and banking fees, this creates cross-subsidies between payment methods. Because higher-income individuals tend to use credit cards more than those with lower incomes, our results indicate that these cross-subsidies might lead to regressive distributional effects. -
Estimating Policy Functions in Payments Systems Using Reinforcement Learning
We demonstrate the ability of reinforcement learning techniques to estimate the best-response functions of banks participating in high-value payments systems—a real-world strategic game of incomplete information. -
Eggs in One Basket: Security and Convenience of Digital Currencies
Digital currencies store balances in anonymous electronic addresses. This paper analyzes the trade-offs between the safety and convenience of aggregating balances in addresses, electronic wallets and banks. -
Using Payments Data to Nowcast Macroeconomic Variables During the Onset of COVID-19
We use retail payment data in conjunction with machine learning techniques to predict the effects of COVID-19 on the Canadian economy in near-real time. Our model yields a significant increase in macroeconomic prediction accuracy over a linear benchmark model. -
Safe Payments
In a cashless economy, would the private sector invest in the optimal level of safety in a deposit-based payment system? In general, because of externalities, the answer is no. While the private sector could over- or under-invest in safety, the government can use taxes or subsidies to correct private incentives. -
November 12, 2020
Helping the economy after the COVID‑19 pandemic
The pandemic won’t last forever. Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins talks about what the economy will need once we’re past the COVID-19 crisis. -
November 12, 2020
Exploring life after COVID-19: the far side of the moon
Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins discusses what the economy will need once we’re past the COVID-19 crisis. -
Security and convenience of a central bank digital currency
An anonymous token-based central bank digital currency (CBDC) would pose certain security risks to users. These risks arise from how balances are aggregated, from their transactional use and from the competition between suppliers of aggregation solutions.