The Royal Canadian Mint wants to get rid of pocket change — and it’s enlisting hacker-types for help.
Less than a week after the government announced the penny’s impending death, the Mint quietly unveiled its digital currency called MintChip.
Still in the research and development phase, MintChip will ultimately let people pay each other directly using smartphones, USB sticks, computers, tablets and clouds. The digital currency will be anonymous and good for small transactions — just like cash, the Mint says.
To make sure its technology meets the gold standard in a world where digital transactions are gaining steam, the Mint is holding a contest for software developers to create applications using the MintChip.
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Commerce is changing and the Mint has always been innovative, Brûlé said. (For instance, it did an initial public offering of exchange traded receipts of its gold holdings last year.)
“There’s been a very huge growing digital economy that is really going to be fueled by smartphones and mobile being the next big thing,” he said.
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MintChip, a secure microchip, will be able to do this by letting people transfer small amounts of money (for an iTunes song or a newspaper) with no personal information attached to it, he said.
