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Over the last two years, digital payment solutions, including peer-to-peer apps, digital wallets, and contactless payment solutions, have grown in popularity and adoption. With 125 million American mobile payment users predicted by 2025 Commonwealth sought to understand the potential for these payment apps as a channel to advance inclusive and equitable financial access.
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) has published a pilot study on the use and understanding of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services in Canada as part of the Agency’s research on emerging consumers trends. Similar to instalment loans, BNPL services allow consumers to purchase goods and services and pay for them over time, either by spreading their payments out into equal, smaller instalments, or by delaying their payments. Among those surveyed, 34% indicated that they were familiar with these services, and 8% indicated that they had used at least one such service between September 2019 to March 2021. The most common items purchased this way included furniture or appliances (39%), electronics (32%), and clothing and fashion (23%); however, some consumers used the services for household essentials (8%) and groceries (5%). As these findings are based on a small sample, additional research is needed to establish a more comprehensive picture of how Canadians use and understand BNPL services.
Technology can play a key role in addressing some of the financial challenges that Canadians face on a day-to-day basis. Over the last five to ten years we have seen a growing number of companies, called fintechs, that primarily use technology to change and enhance the way we do banking or access financial advice and services. Many of these companies are building products that are specifically meant to help Canadians improve their financial health. The purpose of this report is to explore the existing financial health fintech landscape in Canada, the challenges that these companies face, and how an accelerator program that provides mentorship and resource supports over a defined time-frame can better help these financial health fintechs grow and thereby help improve the financial health of people across Canada.
The 2013 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC) is the sixth in a series of annual studies
conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to gain a comprehensive understanding of the cash and noncash payment behaviour of U.S. consumers. This report summarizes data collected in the 2013 SCPC and contains 57 tables with detailed estimates of the number of consumer payments, rate of adoption, and share of consumers using nine common payment instruments—cash, checks, money orders, traveler’s checks, debit cards, credit cards, prepaid cards, online banking bill payments (OBBP), and bank account number payments (BANP)— plus payments made directly from consumers’ income source. The report also contains estimates of consumer activity related to banking, cash management, and other payment
practices; consumer assessments of payment characteristics; and a rich set of consumer and
household demographic characteristics.