The Australian news service 9News reports on the “strongest sign yet” that Australia is headed toward a “totally cashless society… the number of notes in circulation officially declining for the first time since dollars and cents were introduced in 1966.”
According to data from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), more than a billion dollars worth of physical cash disappeared from circulation in the last financial year, a shift that’s likely to make life more difficult for the elderly and for those in the regions. Authorities say less cash will also hurt the nation’s criminals, who rely heavily on its use, making it harder for them to make transactions undetected…
The RBA’s survey of consumers’ payment trends revealed that a third of Aussies now consider themselves “low cash users” — meaning they claim to use cash for less than 20 per cent of all their in-person transactions. In 2019, about half of the nation’s residents were reported as such… It’s expected that cash use will continue to decrease in the coming years, similar to the use of cheques, which are set to wrap up completely in the country by 2030.
