Resilient Cash in Canada

The Bank of Canada (BOC) runs two ‘Cash Alternative Surveys’ (CAS) in April and August each year of a representative sample of 2,500 – 3,500 Canadians. It combines this with data from its Bank Note Distribution System to monitor the use of cash. BOC has just issued its latest staff discussion paper looking at what happened in 2021 ¹.

The data shows that between the start of the pandemic in March 2020 in Canada the value of the notes in circulation (NIC) doubled. BOC took the weekly NIC data from 2017 to 2019 and extrapolated out what would have happened for each denomination in 2020 and 2021. If found that the low value notes grew less than the prediction while the high value notes grew more, reinforcing the view that money was held primarily for precautionary reasons.