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At the Canadian customs checkpoint at Terminal 3 of the Toronto Pearson International Airport, if a traveler needs to pay duty on an item, what payment methods are accepted? Specifically:

  • Will US Dollars (cash) be accepted?
  • Is "deferred payment" an option? (Leave item at airport temporarily, pay duty later to collect it)?

(The CBSA FAQ mentions a "cash" option but no mention of currencies. Also, it makes no mention of a "deferred" option, but I'm guessing this must exist in some form, since some travelers may not have the cash immediately available to pay the required duties. It would be great to get a confirmation of this somewhere though.)

Eugene O
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2 Answers2

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https://travel.gc.ca/returning/customs/what-you-can-bring-home-to-canada

You can pay by cash, travellers' cheque, Visa, American Express or MasterCard. The CBSA also accepts debit cards at most offices.

Only Canadian dollars are valid currency in Canada. There is no reason to expect customs to expect other money.

Deferred refers to the goods not accompanying you but arriving later.

Edit: as Eugene O brilliantly found at http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publications/dm-md/d17/d17-1-5-eng.html#_a43 actually USD is accepted!

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I called CBSA at Pearson today to get an authoritative answer - it was surprisingly easy to reach a real person (I reached someone in Terminal 1 but he assured me that the information applies equally to both terminals).

Here's what he told me:

  • They prefer not to accept US dollars, but will accept them if there's no other payment option
  • It is perfectly ok to leave the item at the airport and come back to pay the duty on it later
Eugene O
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