January 15, 2025 • 17 mins
Our biggest banks appear to be shunning it, many of our shops have stopped using it, but can we survive without cash? In this week’s podcast, Rebecca Jones asks Bloomberg News finance editor Adam Haigh if Australia could ever become a cashless nation.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I think arguably we're already cashless.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's all part of a much bigger digital revolution. Cash
is what we use. Australians. More and more are ditching cash,
and some of our biggest banks appear to be encouraging
the demise of notes and coins. Are we on our
way to becoming the world's first cashless nation? Hello and
(00:24):
a very happy new year to you all. I'm Rebecca Jones,
and welcome to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast. Today, Australia is
at the acute end of a scenario playing out in
many countries around the world. More and more Ozzies are
using digital payments to buy everything from coffee to cars,
But at the same time we're hoarding paper money, you know,
(00:45):
just in case. To make matters more interesting, the government
is insisting that some businesses will need to continue to
accept cash. So which is it cash or cashless? Adam
Hague is a finance editor at Bloomberg based in Sydney,
and he joins me today to unpick this complicated state
of play. Adam, great to have.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
You back, Great to be back back. You know.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It was sometime mid I think twenty twenty I went
to buy a newspaper during the pandemic, a real one
because I'm a renaissance woman. My fist full of coins
was rejected by the newsagent. It was adam, you know,
the first time I had ever really contemplated a world
without physical currency. But I guess that's happening. What is
(01:30):
happening with cash use in Australia? Can you give me
some stats?
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, I sure can have a look at this RBA data,
which is the Reserve Bank of Australia, the central bank here.
So going back to two thousand and seven, cash has
a payment method on Australia was about seventy percent of
all transactions, right with the rest in credit and debit cards.
Now that's come down to about thirteen percent, with card
(01:54):
use ballooning to seventy seven percent. So clearly it's a
story of umbling cash use in Australia over a relatively
short period, a big flip in the way that people
are paying for everything really in their daily lives. And
of course one main reason for this is that you've
had this huge growth in digital wallets on people's phones,
(02:16):
which are pretty much the main way that people pay
for things in Australia these days.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Something we were not doing in two thousand and seven,
at least I wasn't on my BlackBerry and you probably
heard Nokia flip phone.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I'm guessing yeah, one of those obsolete these days.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Motoroll Eraser. So. One of the biggest banks last month,
the CBA, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, they've done a huge
backflip and scrapped a decision to start charging their customers
for withdrawing cash at their own ATMs. Let's take a
listen at what CBA's head of Retail Banking Services, Angus Sullivan,
(02:55):
had to say about that.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
The changes that we made were motivated around simplifying our
product portfolio. We've got a product with complete access which
has been unavailable to new customers for almost nine years,
and we wanted to make sure that for those customers
who were able to avail themselves of a lower cost
banking option, we could do that. You know, obviously we
(03:19):
got the comms not landed in the way that we
want to and for those customers where that change may
not put them in a better position, we want to
have the opportunity to be able to talk to them
and make sure that we look after their needs individually.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Adam, Can you step us through how this decision came
to be reversed and why was it so significant?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah, it was just so unusual in such a strange
turn of events over a few days. So the Commonwealth
Bank originally announced the changes it was going to impact
some of their customers on some accounts, this wasn't across
all accounts, and immediately or certainly felt immediate across social media,
(04:00):
you had this huge blow up of reactions of surprise
and bewilderment, but also crucially not just on social media,
at the upper echelons of the government, on both the
government side but also the opposition. There was a talk
of why was this going on and why had a
Commonwealth Bank of Australia chosen to do this at a
time of you know, quite a lot of pressure on
(04:24):
people's budgets with inflation still running high in Australia. So
you had the Treasurer Jim Chalmers ending up saying that
he had had a call with CBA CEO Matt Common
and then the next day you had an announcement that
the decision had been put on ice. A few days
after that you had common again being referenced in the
(04:47):
local media here as saying that he was both surprised
and disappointed and to see that the change had gone
out of his bank. So this was going to be
a relatively minor tweak to just some accounts Australia's biggest bank.
But it was very rare to see this kind of,
very vocal opposition from all swathes of Australian society. And
(05:10):
I think that really tells you so much about this
debate is lots of people have an opinion on this.
People were talking about this at dinner parties that didn't
even have Commonwealth Bank accounts and obviously wouldn't have been
impacted by the change here. But it goes to the
heart of a lot of this discussion around you know,
why would we be charged for taking our money out?
(05:31):
And the broader discussion around cash and cash as place
within Australian society.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, it really hit a nerve, didn't it. And you know,
it's not like it's without precedence either. I mean there's
plenty of times that if you desperately need cash for something,
you use an ATM belonging to a bank other than
the one you bank with. Then you pay a small
fee you'll do that happily, just so you can get
the cash out to do what you want with it.
But you know, is there a biggest story at play
(05:58):
here about how expensive it is for cash to keep
flowing across Australia, especially in these smaller and remote towns.
Have we arrived at a situation where we have banks
footing the bill when they might not want to.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Well, of course Australia isn't an incredibly big place, isn't it.
And outside of the major cities. I mean, you just
have to imagine the logistics of transporting anything to the
remote areas of Australia really, not just cash or banknotes,
you know, anything, vegetables, building materials. There is a not
insignificant cost associated with that. So most in the situation
(06:39):
with cash, most of that's done by a company called
armor Guard, So they're really the main player that's responsible
for the movement of cash, cash transit, the technical services
and the ATM networks around the country. Now, armor Guard
a few years ago merged with a company called Prosecure.
Those two were already market leaders and now they're actors.
(07:02):
One company that has total dominance of that place in
the market. And that's a company that's been struggling for
some time now. There's been an inquiry into what's happening
at that company, why it's struggling, and that's involved some
of the highest levels of the Treasury and government and
(07:24):
the CEOs of the major banks, very senior executives that
retailers that rely on cash, and there's been all sorts
of discussions and presentation of potential deals about how armor
Guard could move forward from its troubles. But really the
situation today that we're in is that armor Guard has
(07:47):
been extended a fifteen million dollar lifeline that keeps it
going through to July, so by the middle of twenty
twenty five, that money will run out for armor Guard.
Now importantly, it's the big banks and the big grocery
firms that are paying for that fifty million to keep
armor Guard propped up. So that's for now at least
(08:07):
now that runs until the middle of the year, and
it's an open question and there's very much ongoing discussion
about what happens after July.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And from the steps you gave me earlier, it's clear
that you know, Australia is very much a world leader
in this move towards a cashler society. Do we have
one of the lowest cash uses of cash rates in
the world, Adam, And if so, what can we learn
from other countries And conversely, what can they learn from
us about what's happening here with armor Guard.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Well, if we look at a recent report from World
Paid Global, they have some very good figures on not
just Australia's cash use but also globally, and they drill
down into the numbers. So let me just give you
a few of those. So Norway stands at forty at
four percent in terms of cash transaction value, so very low,
(08:58):
Australia at seven percent, China around seven percent, and then
places like the US are up at about twelve percent.
So clearly Australia is among the lowest in the world.
And of course one of the main reasons for that
and why Australia is such a leading example of what
may happen in the rest of the world is just
(09:19):
that explosion you're seeing in digital wallet point of service transactions.
So if you think of Apple pay, Google pay, those
kind of transactions, So World pay expect that those kind
of transactions will double between twenty twenty three and twenty
twenty seven they will double. But it's also about the
(09:40):
changing demographic in the way that different people pay for things.
So young people are paying for things in very different
ways to the older demographic, and I think by now
pay later is the ultimate example of that. That continues
to be a huge growth area in Australia despite some
ups and downs of the last few years. So I
go out and buy my sofa, but I don't pay
(10:02):
for it all in one go. I just pay for
it with you know, quarterly installments. And that's very much
the favored way of lots of young people in the
way that they pay for material things. But it also
all this comes on the back of banks reducing their
footprint at branches, which is of course not on Australian phenomenon.
(10:24):
That's happening around the world and banks don't want to
put incremental dollars of investment into places like branches or
the use of cash when they can clearly see that
less and less people every year are using it. What
they want to do and what they're obliged to do
to their shareholders but also to their customers is to
put money where the growth is. That's clearly not in Cashews.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
It's a balancing act, isn't it. And when we come back,
let's take a deeper look at what all of this
means for those in the business of money, the banks,
and for us the customers. And welcome back to the
Bloomberg Australia Podcast. I'm Rebecca Jones, and today I'm talking
(11:09):
to Adam Hague, Bloomberg Sydney based finance editor, about whether
or not we're about to start seeing coin purses in
museum cases. Adam, against the backdrop of all of this,
bank shares in Australia have finished twenty twenty four very strong.
Is that just because they're good at pivoting or does
it mean that the type of legal tender we're using
(11:33):
doesn't really have a huge impact on the underlying profit
that these big banks make.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Well Listen, I mean, I think it's clear that banks
know how much cash use is falling and the cost
of provisioning for it therefore her customer is going up.
So I think that much is very clear to them,
But ultimately it's not a huge driver of profit for them.
I think if you look at twenty twenty four, what
has been the big driver of profit continues to be
(12:02):
you know, these big home loan books and these business
banking books that these banks have, that's where they make
their money. And these banks have been some of the
stock market darlings of last year. You know, they're really
strong performances across the board, and a lot of that
was around the fact that investors took a view on
(12:24):
you know, a lot of mortgage customers who had rolled
off those low pandemic era rates onto higher rates had to,
you know, give some margin back to the bank, and
this overall pressure on margins at banks was starting to
ease and was starting to give a bit of a
positive signal. So the extent to which that continues in
(12:45):
twenty twenty five, it's still a bit early to tell,
but of course a lot of it will be down
to how much the broader interest rate landscape changes in Australia.
If nothing too dramatic happens to the economy, rates don't
move a huge amount and the backdrop does stay reasonably
good for banks.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And that of course leads me to ask, what does
this all mean for consumers in Australia. You know, obviously
it's very convenient to be able to pay for things
with your mobile phone, but will this pivot to digital
payments make banking and make paying for things ultimately more expensive.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Well, I think sometimes consumers aren't really aware of what
costs are involved. So I'll give you an example. The
other day, when I went to buy my kids some
new soccer boots, I looked on the label fifty nine
ninety nine. When I went to the till and I
paid using my phone, a digital transaction, I paid fifty
(13:46):
nine ninety nine, so it was very clear what I
had paid. But the next morning, when I went to
go and buy my coffee, a five dollar coffee, when
I tapped my phone, I was actually charged five dollars
twenty nine. And so clearly different retailers have different ways
of dealing with that and passing costs on because there
still are lots of costs associated with digital transactions. It's
(14:10):
not free, and CEOs of major banks are very keen
to stress that point, and I think rightly. So. You know,
some people don't still understand that there is a Even
when you hand over your five dollar note, there's something
beyond that five dollar note that's taken it to get there,
(14:31):
and that's really what they're arguing over. You know, they're
arguing over whether they should have to stump up that
money themselves or whether we should share it more broadly
around society. But clearly, even with digital payments, there are
costs involved, and there are all sorts of deals between
merchants and retailers and banks and lots of different organizations
(14:53):
within that equation that the consumer never sees. So there
is this idea of you know, who pays for it?
But also when do we really need cash? So during
times of stress or severe weather and flooding, and that's
where we've seen times where communities have become isolated and
(15:14):
people have really needed cash because electricity is down or
the Wi Fi's down and they're unable to make digital transactions.
So cash really does have a place at those particular
periods of time, but of course that doesn't happen too often.
So really for banks and for the people running banks,
(15:35):
it comes back down to what the customers need and
what shareholders want, and support for cash transactions is clearly
not the kind of the long term future here.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So as we head into twenty twenty five, Adam, what
developments should we be watching out for in this story?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
So the main things we really want to keep an
eye on, certainly in the early part of twenty twenty five,
is what's going on with those ongoing discs between banks,
Armor Guard, the government, how this is all shaking out,
and whether we can glean anything about what the future
might hold after this fifty million dollar lifeline to armor
Guard ends in July. So is there a real chance
(16:20):
that armor Guard doesn't exist in the future in its
current form, that's a possibility. And any more commentary coming
out of the government around you know how far they're
willing to go with this idea that older and more
vulnerable people need to be ensured access to cash and
also for small businesses too and indeed who will pay
(16:40):
for that? So I think that's really the main things
that we want to look out for in the early
part of this year on this story.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And probably not a bad idea to keep an eye on.
The sear charge added to your morning coffee, Adam. Thanks
for joining me, and thank you for listening to the
Bloomberg Australia podcast. I'm Rebecca Jones. This episode was recorded
on the lands of the Orunderi and Gadigal people of
the colon and the Urination. It was produced by Paul
Allen and edited by Chris Burke and Ainsley Chandler. Don't
(17:09):
forget to follow and review the show wherever you get
your podcasts, and sign up for Bloomberg's free daily newsletter,
Australia Briefing. Go to bloomberg dot com to subscribe.
I think arguably we're already cashless.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's all part of a much bigger digital revolution. Cash
is what we use. Australians. More and more are ditching cash,
and some of our biggest banks appear to be encouraging
the demise of notes and coins. Are we on our
way to becoming the world's first cashless nation? Hello and
(00:24):
a very happy new year to you all. I'm Rebecca Jones,
and welcome to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast. Today, Australia is
at the acute end of a scenario playing out in
many countries around the world. More and more Ozzies are
using digital payments to buy everything from coffee to cars,
But at the same time we're hoarding paper money, you know,
(00:45):
just in case. To make matters more interesting, the government
is insisting that some businesses will need to continue to
accept cash. So which is it cash or cashless? Adam
Hague is a finance editor at Bloomberg based in Sydney,
and he joins me today to unpick this complicated state
of play. Adam, great to have.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
You back, Great to be back back. You know.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It was sometime mid I think twenty twenty I went
to buy a newspaper during the pandemic, a real one
because I'm a renaissance woman. My fist full of coins
was rejected by the newsagent. It was adam, you know,
the first time I had ever really contemplated a world
without physical currency. But I guess that's happening. What is
(01:30):
happening with cash use in Australia? Can you give me
some stats?
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, I sure can have a look at this RBA data,
which is the Reserve Bank of Australia, the central bank here.
So going back to two thousand and seven, cash has
a payment method on Australia was about seventy percent of
all transactions, right with the rest in credit and debit cards.
Now that's come down to about thirteen percent, with card
(01:54):
use ballooning to seventy seven percent. So clearly it's a
story of umbling cash use in Australia over a relatively
short period, a big flip in the way that people
are paying for everything really in their daily lives. And
of course one main reason for this is that you've
had this huge growth in digital wallets on people's phones,
(02:16):
which are pretty much the main way that people pay
for things in Australia these days.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Something we were not doing in two thousand and seven,
at least I wasn't on my BlackBerry and you probably
heard Nokia flip phone.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I'm guessing yeah, one of those obsolete these days.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Motoroll Eraser. So. One of the biggest banks last month,
the CBA, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, they've done a huge
backflip and scrapped a decision to start charging their customers
for withdrawing cash at their own ATMs. Let's take a
listen at what CBA's head of Retail Banking Services, Angus Sullivan,
(02:55):
had to say about that.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
The changes that we made were motivated around simplifying our
product portfolio. We've got a product with complete access which
has been unavailable to new customers for almost nine years,
and we wanted to make sure that for those customers
who were able to avail themselves of a lower cost
banking option, we could do that. You know, obviously we
(03:19):
got the comms not landed in the way that we
want to and for those customers where that change may
not put them in a better position, we want to
have the opportunity to be able to talk to them
and make sure that we look after their needs individually.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Adam, Can you step us through how this decision came
to be reversed and why was it so significant?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah, it was just so unusual in such a strange
turn of events over a few days. So the Commonwealth
Bank originally announced the changes it was going to impact
some of their customers on some accounts, this wasn't across
all accounts, and immediately or certainly felt immediate across social media,
(04:00):
you had this huge blow up of reactions of surprise
and bewilderment, but also crucially not just on social media,
at the upper echelons of the government, on both the
government side but also the opposition. There was a talk
of why was this going on and why had a
Commonwealth Bank of Australia chosen to do this at a
time of you know, quite a lot of pressure on
(04:24):
people's budgets with inflation still running high in Australia. So
you had the Treasurer Jim Chalmers ending up saying that
he had had a call with CBA CEO Matt Common
and then the next day you had an announcement that
the decision had been put on ice. A few days
after that you had common again being referenced in the
(04:47):
local media here as saying that he was both surprised
and disappointed and to see that the change had gone
out of his bank. So this was going to be
a relatively minor tweak to just some accounts Australia's biggest bank.
But it was very rare to see this kind of,
very vocal opposition from all swathes of Australian society. And
(05:10):
I think that really tells you so much about this
debate is lots of people have an opinion on this.
People were talking about this at dinner parties that didn't
even have Commonwealth Bank accounts and obviously wouldn't have been
impacted by the change here. But it goes to the
heart of a lot of this discussion around you know,
why would we be charged for taking our money out?
(05:31):
And the broader discussion around cash and cash as place
within Australian society.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, it really hit a nerve, didn't it. And you know,
it's not like it's without precedence either. I mean there's
plenty of times that if you desperately need cash for something,
you use an ATM belonging to a bank other than
the one you bank with. Then you pay a small
fee you'll do that happily, just so you can get
the cash out to do what you want with it.
But you know, is there a biggest story at play
(05:58):
here about how expensive it is for cash to keep
flowing across Australia, especially in these smaller and remote towns.
Have we arrived at a situation where we have banks
footing the bill when they might not want to.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Well, of course Australia isn't an incredibly big place, isn't it.
And outside of the major cities. I mean, you just
have to imagine the logistics of transporting anything to the
remote areas of Australia really, not just cash or banknotes,
you know, anything, vegetables, building materials. There is a not
insignificant cost associated with that. So most in the situation
(06:39):
with cash, most of that's done by a company called
armor Guard, So they're really the main player that's responsible
for the movement of cash, cash transit, the technical services
and the ATM networks around the country. Now, armor Guard
a few years ago merged with a company called Prosecure.
Those two were already market leaders and now they're actors.
(07:02):
One company that has total dominance of that place in
the market. And that's a company that's been struggling for
some time now. There's been an inquiry into what's happening
at that company, why it's struggling, and that's involved some
of the highest levels of the Treasury and government and
(07:24):
the CEOs of the major banks, very senior executives that
retailers that rely on cash, and there's been all sorts
of discussions and presentation of potential deals about how armor
Guard could move forward from its troubles. But really the
situation today that we're in is that armor Guard has
(07:47):
been extended a fifteen million dollar lifeline that keeps it
going through to July, so by the middle of twenty
twenty five, that money will run out for armor Guard.
Now importantly, it's the big banks and the big grocery
firms that are paying for that fifty million to keep
armor Guard propped up. So that's for now at least
(08:07):
now that runs until the middle of the year, and
it's an open question and there's very much ongoing discussion
about what happens after July.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And from the steps you gave me earlier, it's clear
that you know, Australia is very much a world leader
in this move towards a cashler society. Do we have
one of the lowest cash uses of cash rates in
the world, Adam, And if so, what can we learn
from other countries And conversely, what can they learn from
us about what's happening here with armor Guard.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Well, if we look at a recent report from World
Paid Global, they have some very good figures on not
just Australia's cash use but also globally, and they drill
down into the numbers. So let me just give you
a few of those. So Norway stands at forty at
four percent in terms of cash transaction value, so very low,
(08:58):
Australia at seven percent, China around seven percent, and then
places like the US are up at about twelve percent.
So clearly Australia is among the lowest in the world.
And of course one of the main reasons for that
and why Australia is such a leading example of what
may happen in the rest of the world is just
(09:19):
that explosion you're seeing in digital wallet point of service transactions.
So if you think of Apple pay, Google pay, those
kind of transactions, So World pay expect that those kind
of transactions will double between twenty twenty three and twenty
twenty seven they will double. But it's also about the
(09:40):
changing demographic in the way that different people pay for things.
So young people are paying for things in very different
ways to the older demographic, and I think by now
pay later is the ultimate example of that. That continues
to be a huge growth area in Australia despite some
ups and downs of the last few years. So I
go out and buy my sofa, but I don't pay
(10:02):
for it all in one go. I just pay for
it with you know, quarterly installments. And that's very much
the favored way of lots of young people in the
way that they pay for material things. But it also
all this comes on the back of banks reducing their
footprint at branches, which is of course not on Australian phenomenon.
(10:24):
That's happening around the world and banks don't want to
put incremental dollars of investment into places like branches or
the use of cash when they can clearly see that
less and less people every year are using it. What
they want to do and what they're obliged to do
to their shareholders but also to their customers is to
put money where the growth is. That's clearly not in Cashews.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
It's a balancing act, isn't it. And when we come back,
let's take a deeper look at what all of this
means for those in the business of money, the banks,
and for us the customers. And welcome back to the
Bloomberg Australia Podcast. I'm Rebecca Jones, and today I'm talking
(11:09):
to Adam Hague, Bloomberg Sydney based finance editor, about whether
or not we're about to start seeing coin purses in
museum cases. Adam, against the backdrop of all of this,
bank shares in Australia have finished twenty twenty four very strong.
Is that just because they're good at pivoting or does
it mean that the type of legal tender we're using
(11:33):
doesn't really have a huge impact on the underlying profit
that these big banks make.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Well Listen, I mean, I think it's clear that banks
know how much cash use is falling and the cost
of provisioning for it therefore her customer is going up.
So I think that much is very clear to them,
But ultimately it's not a huge driver of profit for them.
I think if you look at twenty twenty four, what
has been the big driver of profit continues to be
(12:02):
you know, these big home loan books and these business
banking books that these banks have, that's where they make
their money. And these banks have been some of the
stock market darlings of last year. You know, they're really
strong performances across the board, and a lot of that
was around the fact that investors took a view on
(12:24):
you know, a lot of mortgage customers who had rolled
off those low pandemic era rates onto higher rates had to,
you know, give some margin back to the bank, and
this overall pressure on margins at banks was starting to
ease and was starting to give a bit of a
positive signal. So the extent to which that continues in
(12:45):
twenty twenty five, it's still a bit early to tell,
but of course a lot of it will be down
to how much the broader interest rate landscape changes in Australia.
If nothing too dramatic happens to the economy, rates don't
move a huge amount and the backdrop does stay reasonably
good for banks.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And that of course leads me to ask, what does
this all mean for consumers in Australia. You know, obviously
it's very convenient to be able to pay for things
with your mobile phone, but will this pivot to digital
payments make banking and make paying for things ultimately more expensive.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Well, I think sometimes consumers aren't really aware of what
costs are involved. So I'll give you an example. The
other day, when I went to buy my kids some
new soccer boots, I looked on the label fifty nine
ninety nine. When I went to the till and I
paid using my phone, a digital transaction, I paid fifty
(13:46):
nine ninety nine, so it was very clear what I
had paid. But the next morning, when I went to
go and buy my coffee, a five dollar coffee, when
I tapped my phone, I was actually charged five dollars
twenty nine. And so clearly different retailers have different ways
of dealing with that and passing costs on because there
still are lots of costs associated with digital transactions. It's
(14:10):
not free, and CEOs of major banks are very keen
to stress that point, and I think rightly. So. You know,
some people don't still understand that there is a Even
when you hand over your five dollar note, there's something
beyond that five dollar note that's taken it to get there,
(14:31):
and that's really what they're arguing over. You know, they're
arguing over whether they should have to stump up that
money themselves or whether we should share it more broadly
around society. But clearly, even with digital payments, there are
costs involved, and there are all sorts of deals between
merchants and retailers and banks and lots of different organizations
(14:53):
within that equation that the consumer never sees. So there
is this idea of you know, who pays for it?
But also when do we really need cash? So during
times of stress or severe weather and flooding, and that's
where we've seen times where communities have become isolated and
(15:14):
people have really needed cash because electricity is down or
the Wi Fi's down and they're unable to make digital transactions.
So cash really does have a place at those particular
periods of time, but of course that doesn't happen too often.
So really for banks and for the people running banks,
(15:35):
it comes back down to what the customers need and
what shareholders want, and support for cash transactions is clearly
not the kind of the long term future here.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So as we head into twenty twenty five, Adam, what
developments should we be watching out for in this story?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
So the main things we really want to keep an
eye on, certainly in the early part of twenty twenty five,
is what's going on with those ongoing discs between banks,
Armor Guard, the government, how this is all shaking out,
and whether we can glean anything about what the future
might hold after this fifty million dollar lifeline to armor
Guard ends in July. So is there a real chance
(16:20):
that armor Guard doesn't exist in the future in its
current form, that's a possibility. And any more commentary coming
out of the government around you know how far they're
willing to go with this idea that older and more
vulnerable people need to be ensured access to cash and
also for small businesses too and indeed who will pay
(16:40):
for that? So I think that's really the main things
that we want to look out for in the early
part of this year on this story.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And probably not a bad idea to keep an eye on.
The sear charge added to your morning coffee, Adam. Thanks
for joining me, and thank you for listening to the
Bloomberg Australia podcast. I'm Rebecca Jones. This episode was recorded
on the lands of the Orunderi and Gadigal people of
the colon and the Urination. It was produced by Paul
Allen and edited by Chris Burke and Ainsley Chandler. Don't
(17:09):
forget to follow and review the show wherever you get
your podcasts, and sign up for Bloomberg's free daily newsletter,
Australia Briefing. Go to bloomberg dot com to subscribe.
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