MintChip is a

digital currency Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital ...

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 The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-i ...

and denominated in a variety of

fiat currencies Fiat money (from la, fiat, "let it be done") is a type of currency that is not backed by any commodity such as gold or silver. It is typically designated by the issuing government to be legal tender. Throughout history, fiat money was sometime ...

. The

Royal Canadian Mint }) is the mint of Canada and a Crown corporation, operating under the ''Royal Canadian Mint Act''. The shares of the Mint are held in trust for the Crown in right of Canada. The Mint produces all of Canada's circulation coins, and manufactur ...

announced the MintChip project in 2012 and simultaneously launched the MintChip Challenge contest to encourage development of interesting uses for the MintChip. 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. 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.

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. 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 is the technical architect of the MintChip program for the Royal Canadian Mint. A related smartcard initiative, the

Mondex Mondex was a smart card electronic cash system, implemented as a stored-value card and owned by Mastercard. Pioneered by two bankers from NatWest in 1990, it was spun-off to a separate consortium later on, then sold again to Mastercard. Mond ...