Canadians Concerned Cashless Payments Cost Privacy

More than half of Canadians believe a cashless economy would threaten their personal privacy, with digital transactions creating data trails routinely monetised by the financial sector and exploited by criminals.

A study from Dalhousie University found 53 percent of citizens have privacy concerns around the use of personal data associated with cashless transactions. The National Post suggests these fears are founded on recent cybersecurity failures that risk exposing the personal information of millions at a time when cybercrime is rising sharply.

One of the latest and largest examples was a ‘cybersecurity event’ expected to cost the Sobeys grocery chain some $25 million. While full details have not been made public, the event forced them to suspend pharmacy operations for four days in December 2022 and affected their loyalty program—raising concerns of a customer information leak—gift cards and self checkouts. A second example around that time occurred when one of Canada’s largest packed meat producers, Maple Leaf Foods, experienced a system outage due to a cyber attack.

Concerns also stem from the unauthorised use some retailers make of personal data, with an investigation by privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne finding Home Depot passed the email addresses and spending habits of its customers to Meta—owner of Facebook—without their consent.

Sylvain Charlebois, Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University where the study was conducted, observes: ‘People are starting to think differently about the cashless economy. Maybe we’re a little bit more vulnerable than we think.’

Cash offers strong protection of privacy, enabling anonymous transactions. While cashless transactions are valuable in terms of expanding payment choice, they come at the cost of this privacy, with personal data becoming an ever-more valuable commodity.