Canada

In-store payments are overwhelmingly contactless. In the Bank of Canada’s 2025 survey, 63% of in-person payments were contactless, and phones or other mobile devices made up a quarter of contactless credit payments. Cash fell to 18% of point-of-sale transactions by number and 10% by value in 2025, from 21% and 11% in 2024. Interac Debit, the domestic debit network, is the standard way to pay from a bank account at the till, alongside Visa and Mastercard credit cards. Payments Canada recorded 13 billion contactless transactions in 2024, 58% of all payment volume.

Statistics Canada reported retail e-commerce sales of CAD 5.7 billion in June 2026, 7.7% of total retail trade (seasonally adjusted). Large marketplaces include Amazon and Walmart. Sales tax differs by province (GST, HST or GST plus a provincial sales tax).Non-resident vendors selling digital products or services to Canadian consumers must register for GST/HST under a simplified regime once revenues exceed CAD 30,000 in any 12-month period, a rule in force since July 2021 that also reaches goods held in Canadian fulfilment warehouses. Since October 2022, merchants may add a credit card surcharge capped at 2.4% or their cost of acceptance, whichever is lower; this option is not available to Quebec-based merchants because of provincial consumer protection law.

The Bank of Canada supervises payment service providers under the Retail Payment Activities Act (RPAA). Registration began on 1 November 2024, and from 8 September 2025 registered PSPs must meet requirements on operational risk management and safeguarding end-user funds. Payments Canada runs the national clearing and settlement systems; its Real-Time Rail (RTR) instant payment system has a by-law and rules in force from 24 August 2026 and is planned to launch in the fourth quarter of 2026. Banks are federally regulated by OSFI, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) oversees consumer protection and the card industry code of conduct, and FINTRAC handles anti-money-laundering registration and reporting for money services businesses.

Account ownership is close to universal. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 found that 98% of Canadian adults had an account and 94.5% owned a debit card in 2024; its 2021 round put credit card ownership at 83%. The Bank of Canada’s 2025 survey found 99% of adults owned a debit card and 89% a credit card, while 12% described themselves as cashless. Cash still matters to many people: Payments Canada found 48% of Canadians used it frequently in 2024.