Opposition is growing as banks push to make Australia a cashless society, as branches close and more restrictions are placed on access to your cash

A petition to prevent Australia from becoming a cashless society has garnered more than 120,000 signatures as banks increasingly restrict customers’ access to their money.

The Change.org petition calls for an ‘An Australian guarantee for cash and banking’ that would see the government step in to regulate banks streamlining their operations by closing branches or removing personal money services.

In Australia, more than 1,600 bank branches permanently closed between June 2017 and July 2022, with a “disproportionate number” in regional communities more severely affected, according to the Financial Services Union.

Westpac has embarked on a ‘co-locating’ strategy whereby it is closing a number of individual locations of brands it owns, such as St George, and moving them to a Westpac branch.

While the remaining big four banks – Commonwealth, ANZ and NAB – have all opened cashless branches where customers are directed to ATMs for “daily banking.”

All the big four banks have also introduced restrictions on customers sending large amounts of money to cryptocurrency exchanges and associated sites.

The banks say this is to avoid scams, but the cryptocurrency community has argued that they are protecting their own bottom line from competitors who want to “enter” their field.

All this in the midst of banks making huge profits, with the Commonwealth Bank recording a record annual profit of $10 billion this week as rising interest rates boost its lending income.

This is reported by Change.org petition launched in March by Cash Welcome founder Jason Bryce: ‘Banks are leaving cities and suburbs and Australians don’t have easy access to cash and banking services.’

While the move to protect physical notes and coins may seem like paranoia about moving to digital transactions, Bryce said the reason was more practical.

He explained that a cashless society excludes some groups such as the elderly from the economy, wastes the value of cash by imposing fees on customers and businesses, is vulnerable to computer hacks and malfunctions, and makes it more difficult for people to budget.

“No Australian city, suburb or community should be left without reasonable local access to full banking services and physical notes and coins,” the petition demands.

“Every Australian should be able to use cash to buy food and groceries if they want to.”

Dr. Chris Vasantkumar of Macquarie University said ‘Going cashless is privatizing a public good: money’.

“Transactions have moved out of the public sphere into private banking infrastructures and someone is making money off your transactions.”

Mr. Bryce’s personal reasons for switching to cash arose in 2020 when he discovered that he spent more simply by using a card or phone and did not relate it to real money.

“I was tapping, tapping, tapping my card to buy everything and I lost control of my budget, so I decided not to do it again,” he told Nine News.

He said there were other unexpected benefits in addition to better management of his money.

“I noticed I ate better because I wasn’t just tapping to pay for that pack of chips. I had to go for extra cash and realized I didn’t want to hand over the money for junk food.”

Jason Bryce is committed to saving money as banks ‘go digital’ with a petition he launched that gained more than 120,000 supporters

A petition to ensure Australians always have access to and use cash at businesses has garnered more than 120,000 signatures

Once a well-known principle of budgeting; putting physical banknotes in envelopes for various expenses is making a comeback with one filling money trends on TikTok.

Sydney Morning Herald financial commentator Nicole Pederson-McKinnon said in April that she cut her spending by as much as 35 percent by using the tactic.

The Reserve Bank said earlier this year it was “monitoring” Australia’s cash access points, as any reduction could lead to “instability”, but there is no formal regulation yet.

The governments of the UK, US and New Zealand have taken action to ensure access to cash, while Sweden, regarded as the frontrunner in the race to cashless, turned around in spectacular fashion in 2021 by amending its payment services law to ensuring that ‘reasonable access to cash’ is provided nationwide.

Sweden found that some groups, such as the elderly and the homeless, were dangerously lagging behind an almost unanimous switch to digital payments.

According to the new law, “credit institutions … must provide services that enable adequate withdrawals of funds from accounts nationwide.”

“No more than 0.3 percent of the population has to travel more than 25 kilometers to access a cash withdrawal or deposit point.”