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 many 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.

A version of Calgary Dollars has existed since the 1990s. But by the end of November, Calgary 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.

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The complimentary 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 as money. 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 behind Calgary Dollars 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.

“They get to know a bit more about community issues, they get to know a few more people in the neighbourhood — as well as get what they want,” Wheatley said. “That competes with federal currency, where those things happen less frequently.”

In Johansen’s case, they’ve made for a way to help his store’s staff. He’s used thousands of Calgary Dollars to buy huge numbers of bus passes — sometimes hundreds at once — and then sell them to his staff at discounted prices.

“It’s more of a staff perk,” he said.

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. The website shows where and what you can pay for using the currency, and the percentage of a purchase a business or individual is willing to accept as tender.

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“When people take out those ads and they earn five Calgary Dollars, that’s part of what’s backing the currency going into circulation,” Wheatley said.

The idea of complimentary currency isn’t new. 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.

Moving Calgary Dollars into the digital realm has been supported by businesses and individuals they consulted for its ease-of-access and security, Wheatley said.

Johansen isn’t sure what it’ll mean for the currency, but said he’s interested.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s the way of the future.”

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