UPDATE 1-Task force to study Canada'…
VANCOUVER, June 18 (Reuters) – Canada has established a business force to review the country’s payments system in the front of rapidly changing technology for things such as credit cards, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty afore~ on Friday.
The independent task force will look at issues ranging from the Bank of Canada’s move in the oversight of payments to whether the country still of necessity a one-cent coin. It will report back by the end of next year.
Technology is rapidly changing how Canadians pay with a view to goods and services, and it is time to ensure regulations be faithful to pace with the changes to ensure new competitive ideas are allowed and consumers protected, Flaherty afore~.
‘Today, Canadians can pay for things in a bewildering number of ways, flat by tapping a cellphone against a scanner … The wallet may more day be obsolete,’ Flaherty told an industry conference in Vancouver.
The body politic announced plans in this year’s budget to review the payments system.
Task force chairwoman Patricia Meredith said the last comprehensive review of settlement system regulations took place over a decade ago, before many of the electronic and wireless systems in practice today were invented.
Meredith said it was far too early to saw if the task force would make a recommendations on coins, bound a review of the future of the penny, and its possible elimination, is within its mandate.
‘Many countries have done that. It’s a potentiality,’ Meredith said.
Guy Legault, president of the Canadian Payments Association, related his organization welcomed the review.
‘It’s global and I have an opinion that Canada is making sure it has one of the most expedient. see the various meanings of good systems in the world,’ Legault said.
(Reporting Allan Dowd; editing by Rob Wilson) Keywords: CANADA FLAHERTY/PAYMENTS
(allan.dowd@thomsonreuters.com; 1+604 664 7314; Messaging: allan.dowd.reuters.com@reuters.com)
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