Royal Canadian Mint Developing MintChip, the 'Evolution of Currency'

The Royal Canadian Mint has developed a new beta product called MintChip. After "actively monitoring the growth of electronic payments," the Mint designed what it calls "the evolution of currency."

The Mint plans to reach out to software developers to vet the technology and challenge the community to identify innovate ways to use and integrate its MintChip, which will be formally unveiled on April 17 by Chief Financial Officer Marc Brulé in a keynote at The Canadian Institute's Forum on Canadian Payment Innovations.

The digital payments space has been booming recently. Canadian-born companies like PayFirma and NetSecure are already active in the mobile payments industry, not to mention American counterparts such as Square, as well as some failed ideas such as the Bitcoin.