Hi Cash Lovers, 

This petition has now hit 200k supports so thank you for making this huge!!

The government's cash mandate consultation period ends this Friday, so please take five minutes this week to send an email asking for all retailers to accept cash. 

To read the consultation paper, click here.

To make a submission, simply email CashAcceptanceConsultation@treasury.gov.au.

You can write anything you like in your submission but be sure to explain why cash is important to you and how you use cash. There are ten questions the government is asking people to address but the 'big three' questions are:

• Defining what are 'essential goods and services.'
• Which businesses the mandate should apply to; and
• Transaction cap for the cash mandate. 

The government is proposing that the cash mandate will only apply to businesses selling essential goods and services. This is a recipe for the mandate to fail because the costs of cash acceptance will not shared widely, but concentrated on those merchants selling essential items.

The cash industry will continue to be under pressure and distributing cash will continue to become more and more expensive.

Please ask the government for this cash mandate to apply to all retailers.

Here are some ideas for you to consider including in your submission:

1) Consumers must feel like they can withdraw their savings as cash easily and locally to ensure trust and confidence in the banking system.

2) Limiting the cash mandate to essential goods and services threatens to undermine its effectiveness and lead to confusion and disputes at shop counters.

3) Governments and large corporations must accept cash and support the cash distribution industry by offering cash-out to $500 without fees or restrictions.

4) Essential goods and services are different for everyone. The cash mandate should apply to all retailers except small businesses that can prove that accepting cash will affect the viability of their operation.

5) Parking meters, vending machines, carparking boom gates and other in-person payments collected by machines must all accept cash payments.

6) Small businesses that are part of a franchise arrangement must not be granted an exemption from the mandate. 

7) There should be few if any exemptions granted from the cash mandate. Australians expect that their legal tender is accepted everywhere. the law needs to reflect this expectation.

8) Time and dollar limits on the cash mandate need to ensure they do not impact its effectiveness.

The dollar limit must be large enough to include household bills like rent, rates and power, so many thousands of dollars.

The time limit must only relate to very late night hours and not apply to essentials like food, medicine and fuel.

9) Cash supports community and social bonds. The cash system is essential national infrastructure. The cost of cash distribution must be shared among all businesses, not just those selling essential items.

And PLEASE SHARE OUR PETITION:

https://www.change.org/SayNOtoCashlessAustralia

If you can spare a small donation, this campaign is really getting busy and I'm racking up the expenses :)

Please help keep us going with a small donation to our Cash Welcome gofundme account.

Or duck into the Commonwealth Bank/send a direct deposit to:

Cash Welcome
BSB 062-692
AC 4954 6502

Yours sincerely and thanks

Jason

jason@cashwelcome.org