ATMs

Great points spark.1234.

As for the ubiquity of ATMs...that's a sad story too. I'll never use one (and I use a computer and have been on the internet since its inception - so long, in fact, that I actually PAID for my first copy of Netscape - I expect I still have the receipt somewhere) or a debit card.

These items are little more than excess profit centres for banks which are already rolling in unearned revenues. I like to know that my banking business is done by people I know, people whose faces I recognize and who know me when I come into my branch.

People who need decent paying jobs doing work that is important and hasn't been relegated to electronic management or shipped off to head office.

We've replaced too many people with pixels already.

The fact that so many Canadians manage their monetary affairs with so little planning and organization that they have to avail themselves of ATMs to get cash at all hours of the day or nithg (mostly at a charge of more than a dollar) says very little about our competence as a people and our ability to plan and look after ourselves.

Furthermore, although I think we can get along without pennies (Australia has) I would like to pass a law that forces people to use cash for small purchases in grocery stores.

I've lost count of the number of times someone with a debit card has held up a cashier (and everone else in the line) in the express line up at my local grocery store.

Sheesh!

Your other points, spark, are also well taken.

Kill the penny - Keep the $20

Who wants to have a pile of $5 bills in their wallets? That just makes me have to carry around more bills. Bad idea.

Definitely get rid of the penny! Good idea.

pennies

G West, I agree that pennies are annoying and should probably not exist anymore. I usually end up giving the shrapnel in my wallet to a homeless person in a handful when I get fed up lugging it around.

But as you probably know, a penny is worth about 5% of its value compared to early 1900s. I would love the tyee to discuss the root causes of this devaluation. http://www.bank-banque-canada.ca/en/dollar_book/appendixa.pdf

Also, the move towards a cashless society (ala Minority Report) should worry everyone who likes to critisize government. The ATM fees that you mention are to become more expensive and more prevalent as the banks push for more people to become dependent on the magic plastic cards. Since the infrastructure isn't in place yet for all retailers to use interac/visa machines, they cannot achieve their goal of a cashless society. But they are taking baby steps there - interesting that gas stations are the first to increase the incentive to use your card. The vast majority of people will choose to insert their card rather than walk over to the counter.

I don't hold out much hope for a law banning the use of cards for small purchases precisely because they would prefer everyone to use cards all of the time. Couple that with the major intrusion on civil liberties with the new BC drivers license (Real ID in the making) and we're well on our way to Minority Report.

good ol' cash

I'm getting so tired of people and their cards.
What is wrong with actually paying cash for something?

Yesterday i was at IKEA {first time in years}.
I went to the restaurant for a tea not knowing that they had a $1 breakfast. Yup you guessed it-people were actually paying for the $1 breakfast with their interact cards!

But i think we need to keep the penny otherwise all the prices will be rounded up-not down.

As for the $20 bill-let's get rid of these.
The bank machines could be reprogrammed to dispense smaller bills.

My change purse has actually ripped from carrying around all those twoonies and loonies from paying for items with $20 bills.

And hey what's wrong with going in and seeing a teller if you are at a bank/credit union already?
These are people's jobs and you are giving them business.

Well I'm off to do a "revolutionary act"-going to the Farmers Market and i will be paying cash.
Gee I hope they have change for the $20...?

I know years back the Royal

I know years back the Royal bank used to have $5's and $20's but now just 20's.

We should actually be looking at abolishing money anyway.

It was is holding society as a whole back and preventing us to reach our full potential as the few with lots of it dictate to the rest of us and that is wrong.

Money = power, and we need a much better system of wealth distribution in this country.

if the world got rid of money we would be a much better place.

It's a pain waiting for

It's a pain waiting for tellers. (I know, the Banks want us to use the ATM -- but our government seems unwilling to regulate the issue, and "competition" patently does NOT work to keep fees low.

Perhaps the "solution" is to encourage ATMs to dispense 50s when withdrawals exceed $100 AND some smaller denominations in any case.

Cash - What's That???

It's a debit/credit society and I haven't used cash for years. OK, the occassional loonie/toonie for the parking meter but the rest is all plastic.

Most people seem to get with the program. :)

Lighten up Tyee freaks

I don't know how many times I've read a delightful culture piece on the Tyee, only to scroll down to a barrage of cranky comments that completely miss the spirit of the piece and focus on irrelevant details that are petty and stupid.

This was a great read, thanks Mike.

currency reform

I would very much like to see taxes included on all posted prices. Not exactly currency reform, but I think it would change a little the way we use money and useful denominations.

Well in that case get rid of

Well in that case get rid of the 100s and 50s, too. It's ridiculous- all the signs in stores that say "We do not accept 100 dollar bills" (because they may be fake). That is against the law actually, and I have argued with the store clerk over that one. If it's legal tender, they can't refuse it. (Not because I actually am about to use a $100 bill, I just like to argue... usually they just shrug and look at me with a blank stare). When was the last time you tried to buy a coffee with a $50? Pure panic. I was in Toronto last Christmas and handed over a $50 for two coffees at a Starbucks- "We can't break that", I was told. This S-bucks was IN a bank. Well I wasn't about to go and line up to break the $50, and apparently the clerk wasn't either, so he gave me the coffees for free!! Haha... I meant to try that again but haven't yet.

Time to change banks, Frank.

Last time I needed a large sum of cash I walked into the local CIBC, wrote a withdrawl slip then waited 30 seconds for a teller. Took longer to fish my drivers licence out of my wallet than it did to get served.

I do almost all of my banking on line or through ATMs including the one at my branch. It dispenses $20s. I used the teller cause I needed a larger than normal sum of cash otherwise $20s work for me.

Pennies on the hand can be dispensed with. All my old ones are worth at least 2 cents by now for copper content.

Fii

.... Give it a few decades and this same article could be written about 50s and 100s.

I remember in the 70's, there were articles much the same advocating getting rid of the 1/2 penny in the UK.

De-value the currency and generally people don't understand what is happening to their own cash.

That reminds me...

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/110504612.html

Down with pennies! (and nickels)

no1important

Definitely not! Cash is (relatively) traceless, compared to electronic transactions. And the way governments are going nowadays, they love to track everything, in lieu of actually trusting the citizenry. We need at least some semblance of privacy.

As far as currency is concerned, abolish the penny, the nickel, and the quarter, make the dime the new "penny", and remove one decimal place.

we need pennies

counting change helps people learn basic math.

$20.00 might be chicken feed to an ndp mp but it's big money to me.

Best line ever

"or a joint before your child's piano recital."

My kid is only three, so no piano recitals yet, but you just cured my fear of how I'll make it through all such events.

And someone else might have mentioned it, but ATM's - at least ScotiaBank, or maybe it was Royal? hmmmm...can't remember, now where's my lighter... - used to dole out $5 bills. Way back in the 90s.

BS

Ha! Hilarious. Nicely

Ha! Hilarious. Nicely written.

spark.1234, you've got it wrong

Hello Tyee commenters and readers.

I've just returned from a short holiday to find a comment by spark.1234 falsely characterizing the relationship between The Tyee's Fellowship Funds and Tides Canada. The Fellowship Funds are funded by you the readers who have donated money to the project, and not by Tides Canada. Tides Canada merely manages, but does not fund, the account where those donations are kept. The Tyee Fellowship Funds are intended to support journalism that educates the citizenry, and therefore contributors receive a charitable deduction, a process which Tides Canada assures and carries out on our behalf. That's the extent of the relationship.

Tides Canada plays the same role for many others, and as a result a wide range of interesting and worthwhile projects find philanthropic support. I invite people to make themselves acquainted with Tides Canada's innovative public foundation model by going to their website and reading up.

Thanks.

RBC dropping the 5s

The reason given by the RBC was that the stacks of 5s had become too full of torn bills to be reliable. Years ago (pre 94) I once paid for car insruance with a stack of 5 dollar bills, as the bank machine next to the Autoplan agent was out of 5s.

Apparently some banks do dispense 50s at some of their machines... I wish the Royal would adopt that; I find that 20s are no longer large enough, I'd rather withdraw 4 50s than 10 20s.... and I think you'll find that most business that shun the larger bills only shun the "Bird Issue" notes.

Painless payment

Axe the conspiracy theorist Tyee commenters!

I don't care how I pay, as long as it's the most efficient means that will drop the price of the product in the long run.

Cash
The most inefficient payment form. It must be counted by hand after close of business each day. It must be counted by hand on deposit to the bank. The mechanincal dispensing of cash at ATMs is absurdly costly. The price of products factors in the costs associated with those activities. Wonder why buying stuff online is cheaper? No cash is part of the reason!

Also, it's great for money-laundering and terrorism. A certain biker-gang owned a local independant grocery store in my area. They brought in huge amounts of cash for deposit. Hmm...why were bikers running a grocery store?

Debit
This form of electronic payment is much more efficient. Unfortunately the fraud risk is ridiculous right now. Around 0.5% of debit cards are used yearly at merchants that are under investigation for fraud (usually no fault of the merchant). Banks get a list of these cards from the police and proactively respond by cancelling the cards and issuing new ones even though no fraud may have taken place on the accounts. This is a major cost to the banks and that cost is passed on to us in some way.

Credit Card
This is my preferred method of payment right now. The merchant absorbs all the risk of a fraudulent transaction. My purchases get an extended warranty. I pay my balance monthly to pay no interest charges. The credit card company doesn't mind because they make their fees from the merchant. Unfortunately, the fraud potential is substantial and this adds to the underlying costs. On the positive side, credit cards have been around a long time and the fraud detection practices are fairly robust.

Chip Card - aka Smart Card
This is the way of the future and it's coming to Canada. It's a debit card with a chip in it instead of the simple strip. They can't be easily counterfeited by the crime syndicates. Or rather, the costs of duplication will be cost prohibitive to make fraud unprofitable.

Effiiciency?

I don't think so.

Profitable for the banks - and that's about it.

Employing a few more people to count the damn stuff is a good thing - not a bad thing.

Customer service is already non-existent in most shops. Bring back more actual people, please.

Debit cards - not nearly as fast and efficient as cash - and every transaction costs the merchant a commission - just like credit cards.

Cash - most stores I go to will give me between 2 and 5 % if I pay cash - which I'm glad to do and my bank tellers are happy to dispense in any denomination and quantity I need.

Like all market based systems these bank bandwagon things help no one but the banks.

The only conspiracy is the one that would have free people believe otherwise.

In my view.

And what's with all the personal attacks on Tyee posters - I thought that was verbotten under the current rules?

Axe the penny or restore its value

Humorous article to be sure. Amazing how many people here have no conception of economics and monetary finance. Thanks to Spark for raising the proper question as to why the criminal central bank of Canada is not called to account for devaluing our currency through inflation. The US Fed bears the largest responsibility for destroying the value of money and creating massive debts that can never be repaid. The bank of Canada (not part of our government) and all the other central banks of the world are accomplices to the crime. We are about to enter a period of inflation far beyond that of the 70's, possible approaching hyperinflation. It is very likely that the US dollar will be completely destroyed followed by all the other currencies backed up by nothing other than thin air and psychology. Since 1969-1973 when the gold and silver standards were abandoned as antiquated the value of money has plummeted. The gold standard is not the only way to create sound currency but when faith in manmade institutions is destroyed it is the only thing left that will restore it. Invest accordingly and by the way I am keeping all the pennies I get. Chances are they will be worth more than they are now someday.