Richmond Hill, first city in Canada to accept Bitcoin payments

Residents of Richmond Hill in Canada will be able to pay their community taxes with Bitcoin.

Richmond Hill, a town of 200.000 residents, is the second community in Canada (after Innisfil, a small town with 36.000 citizens, outside of Toronto) which accepts the payment of municipal taxes with bitcoins, in pilot mode. The trial period will continue for 1 year and after that, the final decision will be taken. The action is held in partnership with the crypto exchange Coinberry, which is responsible for the transactions between citizens and Richmond’s Hill authorities.

The action may start with tax payment but Richmond Hill’s authorities intend to expand the bitcoin adoption in other activities like property taxes and smaller transactions like fine payment or parking spots. Those small changes don’t hold any risk for the local authority as there is payment confirmation from Coinberry.

Coinberry starts this program in pilot mode, without charging Richmond Hill anything. The main goal of the company is to attract more communities and cities in Canada in order to implement its services and enable citizens to pay their municipal taxes with bitcoins. Canada had some bad previous experiences with cryptocurrencies (QuadrigaCX close and deposits loss from many customers) and there are really suspicious about crypto projects.

Tax payment with Bitcoin is probably the most popular Bitcoin application regarding Public Sector and more actions are expected to take place in Canada and worldwide.