MintChip

MintChip is a digital currency that provides the underlying system to facilitate the exchange of value between consumers and merchants in real-time. It was designed to reduce the cost and risk of financial transactions. This technology was created by the Royal Canadian Mint, backed by the Government of Canada and denominated in a variety of fiat currencies.^[1] The Royal Canadian Mint announced the MintChip project in 2012 and simultaneously launched the MintChip Challenge contest to encourage development of interesting uses for the MintChip.^[2] In January 2016, Loyalty Pays Holdings corporation—a wholly owned subsidiary of nanoPay, a fully integrated loyalty and payments platform provider, announced the acquisition of all assets related to MintChip.^[1]

Screenshot of the MintChip app homepage on an Android phone.

A pair of MintChips (centre) and accessories from the Mint.

Created to be the first regulator-friendly digital cash platform, MintChip was designed to support compliance of regulatory standards including anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) rules. MintChip is a digital replacement for cash linked to a country’s fiat currency. MintChip uses secure asset stores to move funds between parties without an intermediary and can process transactions both online and offline.^[3]

Challenge

The Mint ran a challenge during the summer of 2012 to develop apps and ideas for how MintChip could be used. The prizes included $50,000 in gold bullion.^[4] Winners included a wallet app for Windows Phone 7, an app to donate micropayments to charity with every transaction you perform, and a mobile checkout/point of sale app.

The challenge also had a public voting component for the ideas section. The top 25 ideas would then be narrowed down to top 10 by a panel of judges.

Concept

British cryptographic expert David Everett^[5] is the technical architect of the MintChip program for the Royal Canadian Mint.^[6] A related smartcard initiative, the Mondex cash card was launched experimentally in the United Kingdom in 1994 but failed to attract commercial interest,^[7] but MasterCard's implementation of Mondex smartcards in the United States was, as of October 2013^[update], still offered.^[8] As of September 2013^[update], Marc Brûlé, CFO of the Royal Canadian Mint, had still endorsed the concept and announced the prospect of MintChip 2.0.^[9] but in April 2014 the Mint announced a halt to the program and the intention to sell off their MintChip development assets to the private sector.^[10]

Privatization

On January 12, 2016, it was announced that MintChip had been sold to Toronto-based nanoPay.^[11]

See also

• ecash
• eCache
• egold
• Ven (currency)
• Bitcoin