No credit card? No smartphone? No parking: Parks Canada ditches cash option at Rideau Canal lots

You would hope that federal agencies would be the last to abandon using actual currency.

The ability to monitor and trace all financial transactions is a feature to governments, not a bug.

Honestly, I fucking hate parking apps. You always gotta download a new one, you gotta create an account, verify it, type in your credit card by hand, search for the stall ID number, then the app errors out and tells you that they encountered an error.

So then I just uninstall the app and hope I don't get a ticket for a 15 minute errand.

Back in the day, I loved stuffing a $5 bill in the parking meter cash box and then not having to worry about it for a few hours.

I checked their site, you can't buy parking using just the website, even a monthly one. But you sure can pay your parking tickets! (although even that requires a credit card it seems)

What is really stupid about this is that Canada has some of the highest mobile internet rates in the world. And they expect everyone who needs to pay to have internet all the time.

Edit: this is for app based parking in general, not parks Canada specifically.

The apps calculate how many people are at the lot and the best time for them to come around and give the most tickets when payments are expiring. This is huge revenue for private parking companies.

That man is beyond the hands-on-hips pose that other Ottawa based articles all use.

Is that legal?

Conversely, if you don’t have those things, is it legal to park without paying?

In my experience, indigo parking is also accompanied by an indigo pay machine for exactly this purpose. It spits out a little ticket you put in your windshield.

Idk about this case specifically, but their pay machines are all around Halifax.

This was my first thought. Instead of an app and relying on a consuner to have the technology, why dont we put in a parking machine that can accept cards and cash?
- Everywhere I've seen indigo (or hotspot) around Halifax, they've supported both pay at a physical terminal, or pay via phone (which gives you extra features like feeding the meter remotely, or refunding unused time).
  
  Personally I think it's a pretty good system.

One of the modern mysteries I can't quite get is people caring so much about paying stuff with cash. Are people out there paying for gas using cash as well? How many people have a car and don't have a credit card or smartphone? So many questions...

Do you like the idea of all our payments for everything going through a private duopoly who takes a cut of every transaction?

We don't have a digital option that's open or private.
- Do you like the idea of all our payments for everything going through a private duopoly who takes a cut of every transaction?
  
  I don't, so sign me up for the fight for better digital options. In fact I frequently advocate for a BoC-managed alternative to Interac. Even the US with its ridiculously contrived banking system is already working on it (FedNow).
  
  But I don't see the need to wait for that, we can go cashless AND work on better digital options simultaneously.
- The closest thing we have to a private digital cash that is not crypto is GNU Taler.
  
  https://taler.net/
One: Using a card means all transactions are tied to my financial history. For better or worse, I don't want all my personal habits in a ledger somewhere.

Two: Fees. Merchants have to pay fees on credit transactions.

Three: Consolidating financial institutions between a handful of company's. (Visa, MasterCard, Amex, etc)

Four: Complexity. At least one side of the transaction must setup a system to interact with banks or credit cards. Cash is as simple as counting and handing it over.

Five: Budgets. It's been shown that people spend less when they use cash. When someone can see the money actually leave and what they have dwindles they are more responsible with their spending.

Six: Tax evasion. Sometimes, if the waiter/waitress is struggling tipping in cash means it's easier for them not to report that income.

Seven: It makes it much harder to make financial transactions that aren't "approved." Whether or not you like it, some people want to be able to buy drugs or something else that isn't legal. Or even worse, the whims of whatever payment processor they use. A private company shouldn't get to say who can be a merchant and what they are allowed to sell.

Eight: Gifts. Cash is just a simple, nice gift that Zelle or Venmo can't replace.

Nine: No chance of overdrafting and getting hit with bullshit fees.
- I work in fintech, specifically in the payments industry for a company that has a huge vertical spread. And damn let me tell you, we (along with the big ones like MC, Visa, Amex) just skim the delicious foam off the top of everything... right into the pockets of the exec team who keep doing weekly stupid motivational videos from every corner of the world.
  
  I think governments should start thinking about nationalizing the shit out of this instead of everyone paying these stupid nepomonkeys. I don't care if I'd be out of a job, I can find something else.
- Huh, that's actually a pretty interesting collection. A few I kind of don't really think hold any weight but some I haven't thought about before. Cheers.
Ever had a moment where you needed to go buy groceries but couldn't pay because the payment system is down nation wide?

Many people did many times and if you don't have cash on you, well you can't pay for shit.

A cashless society is not a good thing. And that is especially dumb since a merchant can't refuse legal tender, but the federal government is refusing legal tender by doing this.
- Ever had a moment where you needed to go buy groceries but couldn’t pay because the payment system is down nation wide?
  
  Never. If it did happen, it's almost certain that I wouldn't have the cash on me to pay for it anyway 🤷‍♂️I'd rather not walk around with more than $100 in cash on me.
  
  since a merchant can’t refuse legal tender
  
  Where does that come from? AFAICT there's no law that requires businesses to accept cash as a form of payment. Not in Canada, at least.
How do you imagine elderly people that don’t really understand technology would cope with downloading an app or going to a web site to pay for parking.

How can you not have the empathy to think of people that might struggle with things. So many questions…
- How do you imagine elderly people that don’t really understand technology would cope with downloading an app or going to a web site to pay for parking.
  
  Using a card. If they're able to drive, they're probably able to carry a card and tap it. Maybe it's a failure of my imagination but I can't conceptualize someone being able to drive and park a car and yet this same person can't use a card.
  
  Edit just to clarify: the article mentions "a smart phone with a credit card to pay for parking" specifically, and I guess it's my fault for going a bit off topic without a more explicit disclaimer. I don't think a smart phone should be required for anything. I'm just curious about the anti-cashless movement in general, because a smartphone isn't the only alternative to cash.
I happen to prefer not to always have my location tracked by a cell phone company or my transactions recorded by a credit card issuer. The ability to be anonymous is a vital component of freedom. Plus, you can still pay for things in cash if something has wiped out all local network connectivity. And yes, I have been known to pay for gas in cash—not always, but now and again (and an EV doesn't need gas, anyway, so that question is increasingly irrelevant).

I do not require or expect other people to have the same priorities that I do.
- An EV... So a car that's tracking you? 😂
- Right... that's about what I imagine someone fighting against cashless is like. You actually pay for gas in cash and you don't have a smartphone with Internet.
  
  Kind of ironic that you're excited about EVs, though.
When I decide to visit a park and arrive to find that I can't pay cash, it's a problem. Visiting a park is a transient event, there does not need to be ANY permanent relation between myself and the park operator. There is no reason to require trusting some random site with payment details, generating another set of account credentials, and installing some mystery app that wants way too many permissions just to visit a park.
- There is no reason to require trusting some random site with payment details, generating another set of account credentials, and installing some mystery app that wants way too many permissions just to visit a park.
  
  But those are all details that pertain to a specific type of digital payment. Like I said in a different comment, sign me up for better digital payment options and increased privacy guarantees. Sticking to cash is not the only way to achieve this.