A finance expert has warned Australia could become a cashless society in as little as three years with thousands of people to be left worse off because of it.
Among those who could suffer in a cashless society are people in regional areas, those caught in emergencies, indigenous Australians, new immigrants, sex workers, the elderly and even children.
Young people will suffer, according to finance commentator Sarah Wells, because they won’t learn the true value of money and lose valuable social interactions when all transactions are digital.
Sarah Wells told a newspaper outlet that she believes it’s better for children to use cash, and that giving a child $20 and taking them to a shopping centre, or the movies helps them to learn to budget and helps them to make decisions by thinking more carefully.
She said that there’s a responsibility in handing over money and such valuable social interaction, they learn to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and look people in the eye.
The use of banknotes and coins sharply diminished during the pandemic, partly due to fears the virus could survive on real money and spread to humans.
Current data shows Australians have never used less cash with more and more opting for digital payments.
The Reserve Bank of Australia said in its recent Cash Use and Attitudes bulletin that the share of in-person transactions made with cash halved, from 32 per cent to 16 per cent, over the three years to 2022.
Banks have increasingly put more emphasis on digital transactions with Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, NAB and ANZ opening cashless branches.
According to the Financial Services Union, in Australia, more than 1,600 bank branches permanently shut their doors between June 2017 and July 2022, with a ‘disproportionate number’ in regional communities that are more significantly affected.
Westpac has embarked on a ‘co-locating’ strategy in which it’s closing some separate locations of brands it owns like St George and moving them inside a Westpack branch.
The remaining big four banks, Commonwealth, ANZ and NAB have all opened cashless branches where customers are directed to ATMs for ‘everyday banking’.
Ms Wells predicted Australia is on track to stop using physical money within three to five years.
She says we can slow the disappearance of cash from society by using it when it still makes sense to do so.
The arguments for more and more transactions occurring online are generally convenience and safety.
These banks want cashless so that they can make more money on every single transaction, and governments should do their job and legislate to make sure currency will always be there.
It’s simple, if you don’t like the idea, which many don’t, then stop tapping your phone and card and start using cash again, and of course, if there was a power outage, or if the internet infrastructure got hacked then we would be screwed – we need alternatives. USE IT OR LOOSE IT!
Everyone must start using cash because our way of life as we know it is gradually slipping away.
This has nothing to do with convenience or security, it has to do with control.
What will happen if the government believes that you’ve not been paying enough tax? What will happen if they think you’ve not been eating enough fruit and vegetables, or that you’ve been purchasing too much alcohol, or socialising with the wrong people? They will be able to freeze your account and then you starve. Far fetched? Not really.
Programmable digital currency plus digital ID equals total control and we should be using cash as often as possible, and don’t frequent businesses that won’t accept it.
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