##iliency service ( mirs ) – that will act as virtual third site for the bank on an independent it platform. moreover, because swift would operate mirs from one of its european operating centres, it would not be affected by it failure affecting both of our locations, increasing the degree of latency that mirs will offer compared to a traditional model for a third site. mirs will be available from january 2014, and we are the first central bank to take advantage of it. the bank ’ s costs in relation to this project have been funded by the chaps member banks, who will benefit from the additional resilience mirs will provide. bis central bankers ’ speeches turning to the lesson that ‘ liquidity matters ’, we introduced a liquidity saving mechanism ( lsm ) in april this year. there are some technical similarities to the canadian “ jumbo algorithm ”, which periodically looks to offset high - value ( “ jumbo ” ) payments in bilateral queues, speeding up their settlement and reducing collateral requirements. the lsm in our rtgs system is an offsetting mechanism that seeks to match groups of payments, regardless of size, via bilateral and multilateral algorithms that run in short cycles around 275 times each day. all the payments matched by the algorithms will settle individually and simultaneously at the conclusion of the matching cycle. since the implementation of our lsm, participants ’ average peak intraday usage in chaps has fallen by around 20 %, so this innovation has provided a technical means of saving liquidity, reducing incentives to otherwise adopt receipt - reactive behaviour. on - going and future priorities if the post - crisis initiatives i have discussed so far have been, or are, close to completion, one area of work where we have further to go is in ensuring continuity of access to payment services for banks that are in recovery or resolution. in the uk ’ s case, a new resolution regime was introduced in the banking act of 2009 which gave the uk authorities tools to address the risks of discontinuity. nevertheless there is a good case that the effective statutory framework could be usefully supported by private sector initiatives ( whether contractual or otherwise ) to enhance further the ability of central banks, supervisors and resolution authorities to maintain continuity in payment, clearing and settlement services in recovery and resolution. for banks in recovery, that would involve avoiding “ cliff - edges ” in contracts that automatically exclude banks from payment schemes in the event of ( say ) a ratings downgrade. for banks entering resolution,

wallflower in developed countries where many people have bank accounts, although this could change quickly. today it is more popular in countries where relatively fewer people have access to banking services. 4 an example of this is kenya, where many people use e - money called m - pesa. m - pesa is backed by the issuer and redeemable in the kenyan shilling. it gives people a low - cost way to transfer money using their mobile phones. m - pesa is used in some 2 million transactions each day, worth about $ 5 billion annually. that ’ s nearly 20 per cent of kenya ’ s gdp. limited access to banks is not always the main motivator for the adoption of e - money. the octopus card, in hong kong, was originally designed to pay for public transit. it proved so convenient that it is now used for over 13 million transactions each day – from transit to coffee to a pair of jeans. canadians seem to be less enthusiastic about e - money, and there appears to be little demand for something like the octopus card. we are nonetheless big users of e - payment methods that give us access to credit or our bank accounts. almost all canadian adults have debit cards, and more than 80 per cent have at least one credit card. 5 over half of all transactions in canada use debit or credit cards. at the same time, we still use a lot of cash, even if the proportion is falling over time. the total value of cash holdings in canada as a share of gdp has been relatively stable for the past 30 years. there are good reasons for this. cash is fast, convenient and costs virtually nothing to use. it is anonymous, so you don ’ t have to worry about exposing personal information to potential criminals, although for this reason cash is also used in the underground economy. people also hold onto cash as savings for a rainy day. bank of canada research suggests that changes in cash management practices could also help explain the constant demand for cash. 6 so let ’ s talk now about cryptocurrencies. some canadians appear intrigued by bitcoin – the very first bitcoin atm in the world was installed in vancouver just over a year ago. and as of last july, a quarter of the world ’ s bitcoin atms were found in canada. there ’ s one here, in kitchener - waterloo. there are also about 340 canadian merchants who say they accept bitcoin, and about 76, 000