I’m Dinesh Shah;

I’m a program manager
here at the Bank of Canada

working in the area of e-money and

financial technology research.

We live in a time when
ideas and trends

move across borders
faster than ever.

At the Bank, we need to project
ourselves into the future

to see where these trends
and the economy are going.

One thing we are watching at the Bank
is trends in money and payment.

I’m Stéphanie Nolin,

and I am an entrepreneur.
I created an online thrift store.

The platform I use
for my online business

offers clients more than
60 different ways to pay,

including everything from credit cards
to PayPal, and even bitcoin.

Cash may still be king,
but for how long?

Really, we don’t know.

There are some countries where
it has actually almost disappeared.

Take bitcoin for example.

Around the end of 2013,
we started seeing it appearing

on web sites and social media quite a lot
and it caught our attention.

Because I own an online store,

social media is at
the heart of my business.

It’s my advertising and
the way I connect with my clients;

it’s inexpensive

and allows me to share all kinds
of information with them.

With an online store,
the owner is able to gather

all kinds of information
on customers.

I can find out when they shop,
how many items they purchase,

how much they spend
on average per transaction.

I can access all those datas,

use them to have better offers,

and reach my clients
more easily.

E-commerce sites collect a lot of data.

On one hand, retailers who use these
can use the data to better craft

their goods and services
for particular individuals.

And for the Bank, it will be great
if we could use that data

to understand what’s happening
in the real economy.

There’s a famous episode of Star Trek
in which money no longer exists.

Whether we’ll ever get there,
I don’t know,

but it’s an intriguing possibility.

Just imagine that, right,
a world where there’s no money,

and everything is just available
as you need it.

Who knows?