If you are a Canadian citizen who ever used a credit/debit card at a cannabis dispensary (or if you even just invested or worked for a Canadian dispensary), you are now permanently barred from entering the United States. A cashless society is a totalitarian society.

Is this for real?

How would the the DHS or another US entity know about payment transactions made on a canadian bank account?

And, I realize that cannabis is not legal at the federal level in the US, but how would lawfully purchasing a cannabis product years ago disqualify you from entering the US?

I don't know about this specific case, but if you used a credit or debit card, it would be processed by Visa or Mastercard, which are both US companies, subject to US laws and regulations. That's how the US entities would know.

It's for real and the idiotic border police in the us have started asking people about it. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/smoke-pot-us-border-1.47185...

Sounds more like Canada needs something like Swish which does not share any payment/merchant data with the US.

But isn't there something like that already for Canadians?

Implementation is key here. If a new method can be introduced which offers the same benefits of cash while being digital, open-source and on open hardware, I don't see a huge problem.

Alas, such a solution would probably be extremely hard to create and therefore never will be.

These discussions are always closely observed by the fintech startup people.

They could say your rating is not high enough, you are now cut off completely. Or they would know all spending so it would be a bit nosey. And then people would not spend on things causing money circulation to slow, but maybe that is offset a bit by ease of swiping a card.

It's a utopia for big companies and governments, which are the ones paying for the op-eds that praise cashless societies.