News in Brief

Cash Travel Costs Lower than Previously Thought

May’s edition of Cash & Payment News™ reported on a recent Bank of Canada staff paper updating a previous study on access to cash in Canada. Hot on its heels is a new paper that moves the topic forward ¹.

Existing literature typically assumes that households visit their nearest Automatic Banking Machines or financial institution branches from their homes, without combining cash withdrawals with other activities (ie. on their way to shopping). This paper uses smartphone data to construct an improved cash access metric addressing the previous short comings.

The results note that incorporating trip- chaining into the travel metric could show that travel costs are anywhere from 15-25% less than not incorporating trip-chaining, and that the biggest decrease is driven by rural residents.