There's always plenty of media attention for any financial company or vested interest that declares that the cashless society is just around the corner.

Recently, Commonwealth Bank announced that mobile wallet payments were overtaking contactless card payments. CommBank, who hold 40% of this market say the dollar value of their total digital wallet transactions rose from $1.0 billion per month to $2.1 billion between March 2020 and March 2021.

But total retail spending in Australia in March 2021 was $30.7 billion, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, so that total dwarfs any mobile wallet spending.

Last month, merchant payment solutions provider FIS issued a report predicting Australia will be largely cashless by 2024 and received a lot of breathless media coverage.

But Aussies themselves are not abandoning cash. The Reserve Bank of Australia's official statistics show that total cash withdrawals are not in rapid decline.

Cash withdrawals took a hit at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic one year ago but have since largely recovered and are now steady. Both the value and the number of withdrawals made by Australians, is not falling at all and has actually slightly increased (by 0.1% by value) in march 2021.

The only threat to cash is availability. ATMs and bank branches need to be readily accessible so Aussies can get cash and spend it.

Governments need to ensure that merchants and retailers can't ban cash and Australians who want the choice of how they pay for goods and services are not herded, against our will, into a cashless society.

Please share our petition to your friends and colleagues. You can use this easy link:

https://www.change.org/SayNOtoCashlessSociety

Please Like and Follow our Facebook page to stay up to date with our campaign.

Please visit our Cash Welcome website and online shop to support our campaign and learn more about how we are winning the war on cash.

Thanks and yours in cash, 

Jason Bryce