As the article said, border cities (Detroit and Buffalo) have been accepting Canadian money for a long time. I've never had Canadian accepted in New York, so I gave up trying a long time ago. I'm not surprised that they accept Canadian now, they've probably been doing so for awhile, but with the advent of credit cards and ATMs, I never had to put them to the test. I'm very surprised that they accepted Austrian currency. It's not that familiar and how'd they know if it was counterfeit or not?