# Why does Canada care about its paper currency being unrippable? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 6, 2024, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523 "2024-03-06T06:12:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/101 "2024-03-10T13:59:19Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > The alleged problems with coins are more imaginary than real, and are mostly fabrications by those resistant to change (no pun intended). And they’re pretty much the same hypothetical complaints we here now. I recall some editorial cartoons depicting people overburdened by pockets full of coins, which as note repeatedly, pretty much doesn’t really happen unless you specifically want a lot of coins. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/102 "2024-03-10T15:46:54Z")
It was mentioned upthread to some extent, but I think Canadians as a whole probably use cash a lot less often than Americans do. Interac direct debit payment has been a thing since 1990 and very widely used. The added shift to chip and tap/contactless to pay where there’s no difference to the user to use credit or debit cards from any bank at any point of sale has just made everything so much easier. I only get cash out to go to a show, where beer and merch would be cash payment only. The coins usually end up as tips to the server or seller. I’ll pay my cat sitter this week by e-transfer to her cell phone number. She’ll receive the text and direct it to whatever bank she chooses. I see so little cash day to day. And once when I was shopping and the power went out, the store still brought out credit card carbon paper forms and used pens to fill them out to accept credit. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/103 "2024-03-10T15:55:15Z")
I went to Vancouver on business eleven years ago and things were so much more advanced there. All of the restaurants had those mobile card readers which I had never seen before. They are common now in the US but no where near universal. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/104 "2024-03-10T19:37:36Z")
Cash is pretty rare to see nowadays in the UK, to the extent that you would need to ask in many places “Do you accept cash?” And I lived in china for a few years and certainly the first tier cities were essentially cashless by about 2017 ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/105 "2024-03-10T20:20:21Z")
Strangely, when I was at the Shanghai airport in 2018, the luggage storage service would ONLY accept cash. Which was actually a problem since I had just arrived and didn’t have any Chinese cash (and the ATM was out of money). ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/106 "2024-03-10T20:29:58Z")
Huh. Maybe a few things at the airport are a special case, because one thing I found is that the cashless thing in China is an incredible hassle for tourists. To pay by WeChat or Alipay, you need a cellphone. And to get a SIM card for a phone you need ID (with many services only accepting Chinese ID cards) and an address. It’s doable with a hotel address, but I would advise most people visiting China to get a Chinese SIM _in advance_, with services like CMLink. Anyway, this might be why some airport services weren’t cashless? I’ve used the luggage storage service at PVG but I can’t remember whether it was cash or QR code…I had plenty of the former, and few chances to spend it, so I would have been glad to have been rid of it. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/107 "2024-03-10T20:33:47Z")
Years ago, when my father landed at JFK, he loaned or gave cash to another passenger so they could rent one of those [luggage trolleys](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Smarte_Carte_stand_SJC_2019.jpg), which were cash-only at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2024, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/108 "2024-03-10T21:01:53Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Yes. That was my point. We already have both available, and the American public has overwhelmingly chosen to keep using the dollar bills rather than the coins. If coins really were so much better, I would expect that, over time, people would be using them more and more. Not if they never receive the coins as change. According to the late Stan Collender, [it was retailers that had a preference for bills](https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/why-dollar-coin-failed/) which led to the failure of the Sackie. > Our surveys at the time showed that the Golden Dollar was a huge hit with consumers but was resoundingly rejected by businesses. Retailers didn’t want to pay the extra cost of having the coins delivered to their stores. Vending machine owners didn’t want to pay to have their equipment retrofitted so that they would accept the coins (they wanted the government to foot the bill). Banks, which still had a large stash of the much-reviled Susan B. Anthony, wouldn’t guarantee a roll of dollar coins would all be Golden Dollars. Even some transit systems – including Metro in Washington, D.C., refused to change their equipment to accept the coins. > When consumers didn’t get them as change and banks basically refused to distribute them, the Golden Dollar went down in history along side the Susan B as the Edsels of U.S. coins. > **[The Dollar Coin Isn't Worth A Plugged Nickel](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stancollender/2014/05/01/the-dollar-coin-isnt-worth-a-plugged-nickel/?sh=5e3644871417)** > > I occasionally get press releases from the Dollar Coin Alliance, a group devoted to, as you might suspect from its name, having a coin replace the bill as the $1 currency in the U.S. Also as you might suspect, DCA members include companies that stand... No worries though: the experts say that shifting to a dollar coin wouldn’t save the government money. Improvements in bill shuffling technology have led to increased lifespan for the one dollar note - it’s up to 7.9 years now. Cite: [U.S. Currency: Financial Benefit of Switching to a $1 Coin Is Unlikely, but Changing Coin Metal Content Could Result in Cost Savings | U.S. GAO](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-19-300) What a waste of a good outrage. Luckily I can still get annoyed about the zinc lobby’s attachment to the penny: getting rid of that coin would save the government money. But then we’re stuck with the nickel. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/109 "2024-03-11T10:34:17Z")
I just want to congratulate everyone here on the SDMB. We have a 108-entry thread that uses the words “print” 49 times and “money” 26 times, and it’s _not_ about deficit spending. Try to find a recent thread on the Internet where “printing money” is about _printing money_ and not about central bank policies and where the money supply goes and how butter is expensive and Quantitative Easing and COVID subsidies and it’s all XYZ’s fault. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/110 "2024-03-11T10:43:54Z")
Also, when we were going through my parent’s things a few years ago, there were several old coins and a few old bank notes, and I’m pretty sure there was a 25-cent bill from the Dominion of Newfoundland in there. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/111 "2024-03-11T12:26:38Z")
Those 25¢ notes were called shinplasters. Canada also issued them. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523/112 "2024-03-11T15:35:04Z")
[Looks up derivation of “shinplaster”.] Yup, about what I thought. Slang can be so evocative. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-canada-care-about-its-paper-currency-being-unrippable/998523.md?page=5)