Canadians being 'trained' to go cashless

Canadian merchants are campaigning to train consumers that debit and credit cards make cash unnecessary, a major transaction processor told the Ottawa Citizen.

Brian Green, senior vice president of marketing at Moneris, the country's largest processor of debit, credit and gift card transactions, said one of the reasons is to speed consumers through check-out lines.

A fast form of payment is beneficial to the quick-service operator because they can greatly increase their through-put and therefore their amount of revenue, he said. As plastic becomes more convenient, we're going to become more accustomed to using it and will draw on cash less often, which means fewer withdrawals at automated teller machines, he said.

Statistics from the Interac inter-banking ATM company suggest the campaign is working, as up to 2006, the latest year for which statistics are available, direct debit payments in Canada rose to 3.3 million from 1.4 million in 2001, the newspaper. That ranks the country as among the highest per-capita users of debit payments, the Citizen said.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International