Calgary buys into digital economy with app-based money

CALGARY— Over the years, Gordon Johansen has piled thousands of Calgary Dollars in to heaps at his house.

Soon, the owner of the Sentry Box, a game and hobby store in Calgary, will be able to cram them all on a phone.

Johansen was introduced to the local cash initiative when Calgary Dollars manager Gerald Wheatley walked through his door years ago and pitched him on the idea of accepting the currency for purchases made at his game store.

“I’ve got about a half-dozen people who use it regularly,” Johansen said.

Aversion of Calgary Dollars has existed since the 1990s. Now the city will also officially adopt an electronic version of it, too, described as a “digital, instantaneous, and encrypted credit system that is convenient, stable, and proven to create benefits,” according to a statement on the launch.

The move will make Calgary the first municipality in Canada to endorse a digital currency of its own.

Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci called it “an important contribution to the City of Calgary” in a statement about the transition. The complementary currency is pegged to the Canadian dollar and is intended to be used alongside it — not as a replacement — by anyone in Calgary willing to accept it.

These include about 350 businesses and individuals, as well as the City of Calgary itself: a fixed number of Calgary Transit tickets, as well as up to 50 per cent of a base business licence costs, can be bought using Calgary Dollars.

Wheatley said the idea wasn’t to replace Canadian currency — or act as a speculative market, like bitcoin — but to encourage Calgarians to buy local and support their communities.

Unlike bitcoin or Ethereum, Calgary Dollars — in digital or analog forms — don’t need to be bought or cashed out. Instead, people and businesses that want to accept them as currency can register for an advertisement on CalgaryDollars.ca.

Earlier this year, Barcelona’s city council approved a pilot project to test the rec (citizen economic resource in Spanish), a digital currency that runs on a blockchain.