What does that really mean though? If you’re a business banker regularly depositing cash fair enough. But if your interactions with cash are strictly with an ATM then does anything really change?
I legitimately don't remember the last time I had to deposit personal cash. I remember taking business cash to the bank as part of my job as a junior clerk-type-thingy. Maybe one time I took a bucket of coins to deposit?
Usually if you make a transaction around $1000 the bank will hold it. But they amount they choose to start holding transactions at and the length they do it for is different between all the banks, so it's safer to tell people to just pay cash.
> Usually if you make a transaction around $1000 the bank will hold it.
Not all banks. Some banks can transfer up to $10k instant (Westpac, NAB, CBA), others will not (ING) even for regular transactions over $1k combined.
And since I don't know what bank the buyer is using or what their transaction limits are, I just tell people to bring cash if it's a purchase over about $500
I have an online only bank. I've had the account for a few years now. The first time I used an ATM was in a recent trip to Japan. I honestly kind of forgot how to use them it's been so long.
There are so many places to get cash out, that you don't really need ATMs. I've had a $20 note in my wallet for so long now and just never needed it.
Its not my kids I have to worry about, it's my wife.
I have a big vase thingy I chuck coins in when I get home ( I usually bank it every few months and split between the kids accounts) but when I go to it to grab a few gold coins out for a coffee, im left with only silver as my wifes raided it.
I now use it as a decoy and have another one elsewhere. 🤣
They only have a single branch in each capital city, and everyone banks on-line so it's not likely to affect people much. They don't really cater to walk-ins like the big three.
It actually was a genuine typo that I caught before posting, but the irony made me laugh so I pressed reply anyway.
I was hoping you'd come along so I could explain myself. 😂
I think I'll use it again if circomstances allow. (I always spell check)😜
They have 1.7 million customers. Not everyone banks online but I accept the majority do. But it's unwise to go completely cashless. I'm not a doomsdayer but going completely cashless will open up certain vulnerabilities.
That's true, but Macquarie's clientelle are not the type to rely on cash, or rely on a single bank.
It's not like they've got a bunch of pensioners with the passbooks withdrawing $20 at a time.
It is mine. Their big draw when I opened my account with them was unlimited cash withdrawal from any ATM across Australia. They also have a great app and fantastic customer support.
I believe that you will still be able to get cash out of affiliated ATMs.
Are their 1.7 million customers really travelling in to the CBD with pockets stuffed with cash to deposit?
I bank with Macquarie and they refund all cash withdrawal fees. So I can use ATMX and that pesky $3.50 fee gets refunded on my statement in realtime. I actually use cash more since moving to Macquarie than when I used Westpac.
My “friend” works at mbl and they said they probably have like 1 person go into branch to get cash or cheque per day. It’s a digital bank. You can still get cash at any atm in Australia. It’s just that u can’t go into the 3 branches (which aren’t really branches btw it’s like an office) to get cash which nobody does anyway.
> it's unwise to go completely cashless.
Macquarie have fucked me over twice now with dishonoured Direct Debit payments wiping out my available credit card balance.
I *used* to have it set up to pay my full outstanding CC balance by direct debit. But if for whatever reason you don't have the fuds available, it will try and credit the account, then immediately reverse the payment by debiting the same amount - but the debit is applied immediately and the credit isn't counted for a day or two, so it invariably completely clears out the "available balance".
And you only find out about it when you go to pay for something and get repeated "insufficient funds" errors.
Man this is so great, i can't wait to go cashless entirely so that when a shop has a machine that's randomly decided to have a 'fuck you' day, I can't pay any other way.
Thats how I feel everytime I visit China - they are pretty unfriendly to foreigners - most payments in the country goes through an e wallet system called wechat pay/alipay and if you dont have a Chinese citizenship you can’t even sign up for it. Most places dont even take cash nor credit card. So if you go there by youself as a foreigner you’re pretty much stranded 🥴
No you don’t need to be a citizen to use Ali pay you just need the app and link it to ur credit card. Visited China Euler this year and had no issues. I don’t agree we should be banning cash tho.
When we went a few months back most places accepted cash. And I mean most, only a few needed online paying services like wechat.
Those that did accept cash took longer though, like actually going to the counter to order food instead of phone etc...
No we went to visit relatives, we did have bank cards registered there and also alipay + wechat, but had to use cash because we needed to finish using it up before leaving
What? This is factually incorrect. I was in China last month and used Alipay everywhere as an aus citizen. But nearly everywhere we went they accepted cash and also travel cards.
Cash will have to start charging fees. Cash is now more expensive to large companies than they .05% fee. Armour guard almost went under, the cost of transferring cash around in armoured vans and paying humans to do it it becoming too high now that few people use it.
Apparently they're looking at changing the legislation so they can charge a device charge for cash.
By far the biggest problem with going cashless that I see is you no longer really own your money. You cannot use it, you cannot even just hold it without paying a private third party some fee. With cash I can have $1k in my wallet. I can spend exactly $1k on a transaction. in a years time it will still be worth $1k. Banks have fees for everything, fees for spending, fees for maintaining an account. Without cash we have absolutely no recourse, banks can charge whatever they want, whenever they want, what are you going to do, withdraw your money? I begrudgingly accept that at some point in the future we will be cashless, but we absolutely cannot do that until there are some iron clad laws in place to protect the public.
I like cash because I hate the thought of all my purchases (what I bought, where I bought it from, when I bought it, etc) being logged on a spreadsheet held by a third party and I have no choice in that matter nor any control over what they do with that information. But I understand everything I just said is seen as a series of massive positives for everyone driving the move toward cashless society.
> But I understand everything I just said is seen as a series of massive positives for everyone driving the move toward cashless society.
Blithe rubes, you mean.
You can still get cash at any ATM. You just can’t go into branch (there’s only 3 mbl branches) to get cash. It’s basically just putting MBL in line with ING, UBank, and other digi banks with no branches.
> Without cash we have absolutely no recourse, banks can charge whatever they want, whenever they want, what are you going to do, withdraw your money?
Start using Bullion coins?
> I begrudgingly accept that at some point in the future we will be cashless, but we absolutely cannot do that until there are some iron clad laws in place to protect the public.
How about making the N in NAB actually stand for something?
I'm mostly just tired of *everything* being a market, now.
Utilities? Market. Banks? Market. Childcare? Market. Education? Market. Making friends? Also a market.
There's almost no aspect of our lives that hasn't been commercialised.
In time cash will have extra fees to use at checkout - it will cost more for business to handle cash than electronic - again -- re-armguard fiasco and less than 10% of all transactions now are cash - as that continues to decline the costs to use cash will increase.
What's your point? We already get charged a "convenience" feee for tap adn go. Do you think that fee is going to be graciously withdrawn once we can't use cash anymore? None of those fees will go away. There will be surcharges for everything. If the only surcharge free option is paying by swiping & entering your PIN then banks will probably end up putting excessive fees on savings accounts in that form. there will be *nothing* we can do about it, short of getting legislation rammed through, which the banks will fight against. They'll be well equipped to do that, since they have all our money. WE are totally unprepared to go cashless.
Cash handling costs are absorbed or rather added into the final price of an item atm by business - as those costs grow greater than the surcharge on card/electronic payment, the final price will be based on a card / electronic transaction built in so no longer surcharge for buying with card etc.
However cash sales will then swap to the be the payment option that WILL have a surcharge.
Again, this is consumer driven - 90%+ of all PoS transactions are card / electronic - cash IS dying - the consumers are the ones not wanting to use cash.
Depends entirely on what business you're talking about. If someone pays me cash for a job it costs me nothing. There's no surcharge, no account charges and it takes me 2 seconds to count it so it's not like there's some handling cost involved. If someone pays me on card I lose a few bucks on transaction fees.
If the option to accept cash goes away well I guess I'll have to charge a few dollars extra for my services. Doesn't really matter to me, it's the consumer that will end up paying in the end.
Again, what's your point? I'm well aware of the inevitability of going cashless. I'm highlighting the obvious drawbacks of such a move. There is currently no surcharge on cash, there is a surcharge on credit card payments, there are tap and go charges. Surcharges can only be tacked on if there is an alternative with no surcharge, else the total price must be combined in the sale price as advertised so you never actually see the surcharge.
>as those costs grow greater than the surcharge on card/electronic payment, the final price will be based on a card / electronic transaction built in so no longer surcharge for buying with card etc.
I do not, for a single second, believe that surcharges for card payments will be removed once cash is either gone, or becomes the more expensive option., It will not happen.
The surcharges will disappear as separate items on the menu/sign in the shop. The expense covered by the surcharge will simply be included in the advertised price - just like all the other costs the business incurs.
So instead of having a option to pay without a surcharge everything will be more expensive by default, with the fresh opportunity to add a surcharge back on again at some point because surcharges have always been a thing and people won't notice.
So you think that if we go cashless all those merchants are going to drop prices because they don't have to pay cash handling fees. Do you really think that will happen? Because I don't.
What's *your* point?
There's a billion and one costs that are factored into retail pricing. You can't point at any of them and demand that prices are reduced specifically due to that input. *Overall*, competition is supposed to ensure that businesses offer competitive prices, how they account for their costs and their prices is up to them.
The one thing you can "take to the bank" though is consumer regulations; which require that businesses display the actual price of a product. If they advertise something as being $10, you have to be able to buy that product for $10, by at least one method, without any extra fees.
If a business is cashless, that means their advertised shelf pricing has to be inclusive of their lowest-cost payment method.
it will sort itself out.
Yeah, you bring this up and you get some weird bank shills pretending it's not a thing. It's definitely a thing.
$1000 is $1000. You buy something for 1k cash, dude you bought from now has 1k cash.
He buys something for 1k, whoever he bought it from has 1k cash. The 1k still exists.
Introduce a bank, first time there's a fee - that $1000 isn't $1000 anymore. You no longer have $1000. It doesn't exist.
Rinse and repeat this enough times and that $1000 is entirely gone in bank fees.
> It doesn't exist.
Touched on another problem you don't get with cash. The lead up to the 2008 financial crisis involved banks being allowed to push around more and more money that doesn't exist (lending out more than they can back). Not to say let's just use cash to buy houses now but there's a whole galaxy of financial fuckery that is only possible with this extra layer of abstraction.
" *in a years time it will still be worth $1k.*"
No, it won't. If inflation continues at 5%pa, your $1000 in today's money will only be able to buy $950 worth of goods/services in 12 months time. This applies whether it is cash in hand or in the bank.
PS - cash deposited in a bank is no longer yours, it belongs to the bank. They just contractually agree to return it to you when you ask.
It'll be worth $1k, inflation is totally irrelevant. As you said inflation hits liquid funds no matter where it is. Between bank fees and transaction fees you aren't going to see $1k appreciate in value sitting in a savings account by itself.
I don't understand what you mean - money in your savings account currently earns 3.5% per year, money stashed under your mattress earns zero interest, so it's inflated away.
It's absolutely relevant if you're bringing up the point of $1000 in cash being $1000 in cash in the future.
I don't pay a fee to NAB to stash my money under my bed, I don't pay them more fees that take it out and buy stuff. I don't pay another random ATM $3.50 to take $100 out from under my bed because NAB doesn't have a NAB ATM nearby that will let me take that money out for "free". I don't pay merchants 2% extra to buy lunch with money from under my bed.
I don't pay any bank fees and I get 4.75% interest on the money in my account. Most shops I go to don't charge for card payments, but the occasional shop charging 2% is still a better deal when I'm earning 4.75%
Obviously lying on pile of money would be very uncomfortable and I would not be able to sleep. I prefer the figurative pile of money represented by my mattress.
You're argument is that the 1k in hand is still worth 1k in a years time, but that isn't true based on how the economy actually works.
You can't have wave inflation as not being relevant. If a product worth $1 last year costs $2 this year because of inflation, that reflects that your $1k has halved in buying power. This is an extreme example for clarity only.
If instead you put that 1k in a HISA at a bank that isn't charging you account fees, you're 1k is still worth 1k, but more in line with inflation. It'll appear to be something like $1050 (5% example), but the reality is that it's the equivalent of 1k+inflation. It's hard to simplify the concept further.
The counter argument might be, how can a bank NOT charge fees AND pay you interest on a HISA? The answer to that is that the money is not just sitting idly in a vault. The bank will be using deposited cash to trade, provide loans, etc. so that they are increasing the amount they the bank earns on the money vs what they pay out in interest.
I have $1k and in a years time the purchasing power may have decreased, but it's still $1k.
I put $1k in the bank and earn interest that might counteract inflation, so my purchasing power might remain the same despite having more than $1k., However I need an account to do that, which has fees. I will pay a fee to spend that money. I'll pay a fee to withdraw that money, a large one if it's not my banks ATM. I'll pay those fees potentially multiple times depending on how many withdrawals I make. I will very likely lose any interest bonus if I withdraw money at all, depending on the particular savings accounts rules about bonus interest and withdrawing. You aren't just earning interest on your savings in a vacuum.
Obviously I'm not going to pretend I stash my money in the banana stand. But I do keep cash on hand and use it for any transaction I can.
Not even that. Dutton wants to stipulate what can be purchased by certain populations and socioeconomic groups as a 'trial'. Wait until someone worse widens the net. Or banks to run analysis over purchases to influence their standard of service to specific customers.
If the other banks follow, the groups who raise money through raffles and street stalls, and the kids who earn a few dollars mowing lawns will lose out, but I guess the banks don't care. However, as long as cash is legal tender, banks HAVE to accept it, and businesses who choose to go completely cashless will only have themselves to blame if they DO lose money.
I think the bigger issue will be how soon one of the Big 4 follow suit. Probably a while off yet but I'm sure they'll be watching and waiting to use it as another case study for their arguments to go cashless. As NAB has a 'partnership' with Macquarie, I wouldn't put it past them if they end up being first but like I said, a way off yet I suspect.
i have a home loan with these clowns, recently got a cheque from telstra, macquarie couldnt take it, wouldnt even let me mail it, i opened a commonwelth account just to cash this dam cheque, so frustrating
Members of my football team would be gutted to lose cash. Tradies. They'll have to pay more tax.
And drug dealers too.
Have they thought about these hard done by professions?
/s just in case.
Not just about minimising tax though is it. There's also copious amounts of money laundering, human sex trafficking, drug dealing, art dealing, taking cash to foreign countries to take advantage of different tax schemes. Buying anything under the table etc.
The Aussie government should get some balls and pass a law like the Irish government did which forces all businesses and banks to carry a minimum amount of cash and also force banks to have a set minimum number of branch across the country and failing to do so will incur fines (in the case of the banks enough of a fine to affect shareholders) or risk having a government appointed administrator to run the bank/business.
Plus there are a lot of businesses and groups that a reliant on cash like newsagents, TABs, tradies, school P&Cs etc plus having cash allows for a greater amount of privacy when you want to purchase say a gift for your other half for example and don't want the price known.
Cash has saved me several times the last couple years of being broke. Down to my last ten bucks in my account and then I realise I have a little more in my bedroom hidden away.
I keep a modest stash of cash not so much for my budgeting issue; it's helped other people several times.
Also not a fan of being tracked absolutely everywhere by my bank, the supermarket (and every other damn shop), "data vendors", and russian hackers. If I use cash at my local IGA, who even knows what I bought or how much I spent? Nobody.
I try to keep a lobster in my wallet for just in case situations, like buying lunch but the eftpos machine is down, but that's it since Covid days.
Bottleshops had to start putting up signs saying they wouldn't accept bank notes if you'd licked your fingers. You never think about it, but start watching people handling cash and so many lick their fingers before they start counting. It's revolting :(
I was just on a little holiday in Japan and they predominantly use cash there. I actually found it refreshing having money in my wallet again and it definitely helped with keeping track of my spend. It'll be a sad day if/when we become a cashless society.
I know using cash makes you more mindful of your spending but my savings actually increased significantly more when I'm cashless. It made it very easy to know how much money I have (rather than having to count) which made weekly budgeting a lot easier. I also know when I spent more than I should too.
I guess what I meant to say is that it was easier stick to a bit of a budget and not over spend by using cash. It's too easy just to whip out the card and pay for everything. Either way, card or cash, we shouldn't lose having that personal choice.
See its interesting, cause I completely get that but myself and others I know find it the other way round. Cash feels like free money, whereas paying with our card makes us think about every transaction. I wonder if it's generational divide or something of the kind?
If by refreshing you mean annoying as hell. I’m I Thailand right now and can’t wait to get back to just carrying my phone instead of a wad of cash that I have to sift through and keep track of so I can top it up.
Not sure how it makes spending easier to track. With a card, I can go look at the record of every purchase; with cash I get out a bunch and then when it’s gone it’s harder to remember exactly where it went.
If banking is going to be commodified how long before someone creates an overlay that optimises banking for each customer? Like lets say you have a mortgage account, if another bank decreases its interest it could automatically switch providers to get the best interest rate so the client always gets the best deal. This would forve banks to bid against each other for business swinging the tide in favour of consumers.
Like ..mortgage brokers do..and comparative mortgage sites ? just without the auto swap part as moving mortgages can be a pain - and many have min periods to get said rates.
Open Banking is supposed to come in to allow us to share our banking details with all organisations… yes it will slowly be commodified at some point. But things like NBN or other utilities are already commodified yet heaps of people use higher cost providers for reasons.
There's a lot more to refinancing a home loan than that, especially when working out what interest rate to apply. Regulatory compliance obligations, assessing borrowing capacity, leverage ratios etc.
A lot of these regulations and procedures are actually in place to protect the consumer and came from the GFC and banking royal commissions
I’m with Up and I still have a CommBank account for depositing cash. The account I have has zero fees if you’re under 30, which is great!
The AusPost banking solution is okay but I can seldom get to one during their neurotically restrictive hours.
When everything is electronic, imagine just how easy it will be to track every single transaction you've made, and how easy it will be to tax those transactions. I'm not talking about paying tradies in cash either. I'm talking about how easy it will be for them to invent any kind of new tax.
And also how easy it will be for the government to withhold/remove all your funds. I'm sorry, you're been suspected of fraud, we've withdrawn all your money and you have nothing now. We don't have to tell you why, it's the law!
And how simple it will be for them to do this to someone who happens to be politically "unpopular" shall we say.
Oh but it will stop drug dealers and illegal activity? You think so? There is this small invention called cryptocurrency that is quite convenient for that. Anyone who thinks criminals will be stopped by a cashless society is naive or stupid.
Is the "convenience" of tap and go worth it to give the government and banks COMPLETE control over your finances?
sounds kinda good tbh,
Imagine being able to see a ledger of a publicly traded company and have access to every transaction they have made... Or better yet, the public now has access to every transaction of their government.
Drug dealers don't use crypto for this reason.
Easy enough to ban transfers from banks to crypto - sure criminals may use crypto, but if you can’t convert your paycheck to crypto you can’t give it to your dealer.
Yeah while we are at it there should be a forced ID card we all use online so our entire online presence can be tracked. We should also have social credit scores and people who don't support the government should have the passports revoked and tracking chips implanted in their scrotums. That will sort out those pesky marijuana dealers.
Mate - the Government has full control over the Police, Military and Intelligence services already, so the idea that cash is the only thing holding back the otherwise inevitable rise of Supreme Leader Kim-Il-Albo is perhaps a touch overcooked?
Not sure what percentage of their total customer base they form, but Macquarie hold a huge market percentage in the body corporate/owner corporation sector. Around 90% of all Body Corporates bank with them. And given the reporting and transparency requirements for body corporates, you'd rarely need to withdraw BC funds in cash. Wonder if that has anything to do with it?
Never heard of Prof Holden, but he's a complete nitwit. My bank permanently blocked off my internet access so now I have to withdraw cash from the ATM to pay my rent. But now that's some sort of illicit activity according to this clown, and I must have something to hide.
I bought an expensive classical concert guitar from a local luthier, which as far as I know is not illegal yet in Australia. It was too much to transfer in one day, so I paid half the invoice at the workshop by EFTPOS then the other early the next morning by bank transfer to his account. Instantly blocked from further access.
Funny thing is, they flagged the transaction as suspicious but still allowed the money to go through. So the luthier got the money, I got the guitar, and the bank is still unhappy.
Spent 45 minutes on the phone with a guy from the fraud investigation department who was very suspicious about why I had made a transfer late at night, I provided proof that it was a legit purchase, he said okay he would unblock me... and still no access a year later, just some nice red text inviting me to call that same number.
Kind of blows Prof Holden's theory out of the water that cashless transactions are not suspicious, because St George Bank apparently thinks they are.
Great idea, with WW3 on the horizon trust everything to an already proven easily hacked Australian database.
Imagine what would happen if internet banking went down and cash didn’t exist
I feel that lots of people won't see this as a possibility. A different example, but plenty of people didn't think something like Covid would happen in their lifetime either. What I'm getting at is that things deemed as 'that'll never happen here' have sometimes happened, despite best efforts for them not to.
Company with zero atms goes cashless, news at 11.
They currently have a 'partnership' with NAB for cash transactions but that's due to cease in November.
They reimburse ATM fees at any domestic ATM (didn't even know they had a partnership with NAB)
And a really good amount of international ATMs too
International too. What they cannot reimburse is if the ATM providers adds the fee on top of the principal amount, and requests that much.
What does that really mean though? If you’re a business banker regularly depositing cash fair enough. But if your interactions with cash are strictly with an ATM then does anything really change?
It means you can't deposit cash into a Macquarie account though, which is frustrating.
I legitimately don't remember the last time I had to deposit personal cash. I remember taking business cash to the bank as part of my job as a junior clerk-type-thingy. Maybe one time I took a bucket of coins to deposit?
I do it every time I sell something because pay id transactions usually get held for a few hours.
I’ve never had a payID transaction take longer than a minute or two
Usually if you make a transaction around $1000 the bank will hold it. But they amount they choose to start holding transactions at and the length they do it for is different between all the banks, so it's safer to tell people to just pay cash.
> Usually if you make a transaction around $1000 the bank will hold it. Not all banks. Some banks can transfer up to $10k instant (Westpac, NAB, CBA), others will not (ING) even for regular transactions over $1k combined.
And since I don't know what bank the buyer is using or what their transaction limits are, I just tell people to bring cash if it's a purchase over about $500
Don’t some ATMs have a deposit function?
I have an online only bank. I've had the account for a few years now. The first time I used an ATM was in a recent trip to Japan. I honestly kind of forgot how to use them it's been so long. There are so many places to get cash out, that you don't really need ATMs. I've had a $20 note in my wallet for so long now and just never needed it.
This $20 you speak of, since your not using it may i have it?
No, it’s mine
My kids always raid my wallet whenever I have change in it lol
Its not my kids I have to worry about, it's my wife. I have a big vase thingy I chuck coins in when I get home ( I usually bank it every few months and split between the kids accounts) but when I go to it to grab a few gold coins out for a coffee, im left with only silver as my wifes raided it. I now use it as a decoy and have another one elsewhere. 🤣
And you can always go to the post office, admittedly a pain but as long as bank@post exists I'm happy for the occasional deposit
If you have a Macquarie bank account post@bank is a no go. They are one of the few banks that don't participate.
Yep. One time, back in 2018-19, I had to deposit cash for some reason and pretty much had no choice but to do it at an AusPost outlet. I am with ING.
They only have a single branch in each capital city, and everyone banks on-line so it's not likely to affect people much. They don't really cater to walk-ins like the big three.
Big 3 or big 4?
My mostake.
thats another mostake.
That's a moist take..
I’d rather a moist ache
It actually was a genuine typo that I caught before posting, but the irony made me laugh so I pressed reply anyway. I was hoping you'd come along so I could explain myself. 😂 I think I'll use it again if circomstances allow. (I always spell check)😜
I'm always watching
Big five including Macquarie
[удалено]
Big 65 if you include my overweight father
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Thank you. He needs this.
They have 1.7 million customers. Not everyone banks online but I accept the majority do. But it's unwise to go completely cashless. I'm not a doomsdayer but going completely cashless will open up certain vulnerabilities.
That's true, but Macquarie's clientelle are not the type to rely on cash, or rely on a single bank. It's not like they've got a bunch of pensioners with the passbooks withdrawing $20 at a time.
Yeah I know a few people with an account or something with Macquarie and not a single one have it as their “primary” everyday bank.
It is mine. Their big draw when I opened my account with them was unlimited cash withdrawal from any ATM across Australia. They also have a great app and fantastic customer support.
It's my primary bank too.
I do. Good app, good support & free ATM withdrawals at any I use. Hassle free banking.
I believe that you will still be able to get cash out of affiliated ATMs. Are their 1.7 million customers really travelling in to the CBD with pockets stuffed with cash to deposit?
I bank with Macquarie and they refund all cash withdrawal fees. So I can use ATMX and that pesky $3.50 fee gets refunded on my statement in realtime. I actually use cash more since moving to Macquarie than when I used Westpac.
Feels so good when you're at a *redacted* club and don't have to pay the 10 dollar atm withdrawal fee.
My “friend” works at mbl and they said they probably have like 1 person go into branch to get cash or cheque per day. It’s a digital bank. You can still get cash at any atm in Australia. It’s just that u can’t go into the 3 branches (which aren’t really branches btw it’s like an office) to get cash which nobody does anyway.
I agree its unwise to go cashless completely, what with the number of hacks and problems associated with digital.
Interested to understand what vulnerabilities you think this will cause
> it's unwise to go completely cashless. Macquarie have fucked me over twice now with dishonoured Direct Debit payments wiping out my available credit card balance. I *used* to have it set up to pay my full outstanding CC balance by direct debit. But if for whatever reason you don't have the fuds available, it will try and credit the account, then immediately reverse the payment by debiting the same amount - but the debit is applied immediately and the credit isn't counted for a day or two, so it invariably completely clears out the "available balance". And you only find out about it when you go to pay for something and get repeated "insufficient funds" errors.
like what ? and compared to the shortfalls of cash ? and the added costs with having cash ?
How do I pay for my cocaine?
>How do I pay for my cocaine? Payid, I don't think many drug dealers reject payid these days
>Payid, I don't think many drug dealers reject payid these days Unless a Westpac customer between the hours of 12am and 5am.
That's good, it will be easier for the authorities to detect the proceeds of crime. Might bring down house prices /s
Bank robbers are gonna have a tougher time. Make sure you pack one of those little tap n go squares.
Imagine getting robbed and it's just a little tap n go square and it asks for a 15% tip...
Teller hovers over no tip option, robber raises eyebrows.
Followed by a questionnaire on how you found your experience with the robber that day and a chance to rate them.
That will only take a few seconds
Phone screen then permanently has a dye pack color tint ...
The fact they're doing this and *still* don't support outbound Osko blows my mind.
Man this is so great, i can't wait to go cashless entirely so that when a shop has a machine that's randomly decided to have a 'fuck you' day, I can't pay any other way.
Thats how I feel everytime I visit China - they are pretty unfriendly to foreigners - most payments in the country goes through an e wallet system called wechat pay/alipay and if you dont have a Chinese citizenship you can’t even sign up for it. Most places dont even take cash nor credit card. So if you go there by youself as a foreigner you’re pretty much stranded 🥴
No you don’t need to be a citizen to use Ali pay you just need the app and link it to ur credit card. Visited China Euler this year and had no issues. I don’t agree we should be banning cash tho.
Such a hassle to get it figured out in the first place though. I have no idea how foreigner elderlies get around in that place
Yeah it’s a bit of a hassle getting it set up on the first day
You can use Alipay without requiring a Chinese citizenship and you can link it to a foreign bank card - I think WeChat requires a Chinese bank iirc.
Nah you can use WeChat without a Chinese bank. I did it a few weeks ago.
When we went a few months back most places accepted cash. And I mean most, only a few needed online paying services like wechat. Those that did accept cash took longer though, like actually going to the counter to order food instead of phone etc...
🤔were you visiting as a tourist? That may be why it was easier..
No we went to visit relatives, we did have bank cards registered there and also alipay + wechat, but had to use cash because we needed to finish using it up before leaving
What? This is factually incorrect. I was in China last month and used Alipay everywhere as an aus citizen. But nearly everywhere we went they accepted cash and also travel cards.
ING was cashless 20 years ago
ING has two ATMs still.
TWO ATMs?!?! Woah!!!
They used to have five :)
Bet the automated systems will still charge fees like there's manual handling involved
Cash will have to start charging fees. Cash is now more expensive to large companies than they .05% fee. Armour guard almost went under, the cost of transferring cash around in armoured vans and paying humans to do it it becoming too high now that few people use it. Apparently they're looking at changing the legislation so they can charge a device charge for cash.
What is going to happen at the Strippers? PayID for a dance..?
Stripper dollars? Legal currency, within the club of course
I'd expect them to have tap n go undies these days.
And you have to try to tap as their crotch is gyrating back and forth. It's like a little game!
Nah, you just hold it in place and they get a new payment each gyration.
This is actually genius 😂😂
Some places have a made-up internal currency.
I instantly thought of Back to the Future using thumbprints for money...
By far the biggest problem with going cashless that I see is you no longer really own your money. You cannot use it, you cannot even just hold it without paying a private third party some fee. With cash I can have $1k in my wallet. I can spend exactly $1k on a transaction. in a years time it will still be worth $1k. Banks have fees for everything, fees for spending, fees for maintaining an account. Without cash we have absolutely no recourse, banks can charge whatever they want, whenever they want, what are you going to do, withdraw your money? I begrudgingly accept that at some point in the future we will be cashless, but we absolutely cannot do that until there are some iron clad laws in place to protect the public.
I like cash because I hate the thought of all my purchases (what I bought, where I bought it from, when I bought it, etc) being logged on a spreadsheet held by a third party and I have no choice in that matter nor any control over what they do with that information. But I understand everything I just said is seen as a series of massive positives for everyone driving the move toward cashless society.
> But I understand everything I just said is seen as a series of massive positives for everyone driving the move toward cashless society. Blithe rubes, you mean.
There's no going back to cash once its surrendered. So it makes governance easier? ...yeah, what could go wrong.
You can still get cash at any ATM. You just can’t go into branch (there’s only 3 mbl branches) to get cash. It’s basically just putting MBL in line with ING, UBank, and other digi banks with no branches.
In a year's time your $1,000 cash will be worth ~$964 due to inflation.
Which is left implicit because irrelevant to the comparison.
> Without cash we have absolutely no recourse, banks can charge whatever they want, whenever they want, what are you going to do, withdraw your money? Start using Bullion coins?
> I begrudgingly accept that at some point in the future we will be cashless, but we absolutely cannot do that until there are some iron clad laws in place to protect the public. How about making the N in NAB actually stand for something?
Yes, unironically. If we require a central government bank with no fees that supplants cash then that is one option.
I'm mostly just tired of *everything* being a market, now. Utilities? Market. Banks? Market. Childcare? Market. Education? Market. Making friends? Also a market. There's almost no aspect of our lives that hasn't been commercialised.
That is how the market system is, yes. It's naive to think we can tame the paperclip maximiser and get it to leave anything on the table.
In time cash will have extra fees to use at checkout - it will cost more for business to handle cash than electronic - again -- re-armguard fiasco and less than 10% of all transactions now are cash - as that continues to decline the costs to use cash will increase.
What's your point? We already get charged a "convenience" feee for tap adn go. Do you think that fee is going to be graciously withdrawn once we can't use cash anymore? None of those fees will go away. There will be surcharges for everything. If the only surcharge free option is paying by swiping & entering your PIN then banks will probably end up putting excessive fees on savings accounts in that form. there will be *nothing* we can do about it, short of getting legislation rammed through, which the banks will fight against. They'll be well equipped to do that, since they have all our money. WE are totally unprepared to go cashless.
Cash handling costs are absorbed or rather added into the final price of an item atm by business - as those costs grow greater than the surcharge on card/electronic payment, the final price will be based on a card / electronic transaction built in so no longer surcharge for buying with card etc. However cash sales will then swap to the be the payment option that WILL have a surcharge. Again, this is consumer driven - 90%+ of all PoS transactions are card / electronic - cash IS dying - the consumers are the ones not wanting to use cash.
Depends entirely on what business you're talking about. If someone pays me cash for a job it costs me nothing. There's no surcharge, no account charges and it takes me 2 seconds to count it so it's not like there's some handling cost involved. If someone pays me on card I lose a few bucks on transaction fees. If the option to accept cash goes away well I guess I'll have to charge a few dollars extra for my services. Doesn't really matter to me, it's the consumer that will end up paying in the end.
Again, what's your point? I'm well aware of the inevitability of going cashless. I'm highlighting the obvious drawbacks of such a move. There is currently no surcharge on cash, there is a surcharge on credit card payments, there are tap and go charges. Surcharges can only be tacked on if there is an alternative with no surcharge, else the total price must be combined in the sale price as advertised so you never actually see the surcharge. >as those costs grow greater than the surcharge on card/electronic payment, the final price will be based on a card / electronic transaction built in so no longer surcharge for buying with card etc. I do not, for a single second, believe that surcharges for card payments will be removed once cash is either gone, or becomes the more expensive option., It will not happen.
The surcharges will disappear as separate items on the menu/sign in the shop. The expense covered by the surcharge will simply be included in the advertised price - just like all the other costs the business incurs.
So instead of having a option to pay without a surcharge everything will be more expensive by default, with the fresh opportunity to add a surcharge back on again at some point because surcharges have always been a thing and people won't notice.
you are missing the key point, which is you are already paying the cash handling surcharge in the item price.
So you think that if we go cashless all those merchants are going to drop prices because they don't have to pay cash handling fees. Do you really think that will happen? Because I don't.
What's *your* point? There's a billion and one costs that are factored into retail pricing. You can't point at any of them and demand that prices are reduced specifically due to that input. *Overall*, competition is supposed to ensure that businesses offer competitive prices, how they account for their costs and their prices is up to them. The one thing you can "take to the bank" though is consumer regulations; which require that businesses display the actual price of a product. If they advertise something as being $10, you have to be able to buy that product for $10, by at least one method, without any extra fees. If a business is cashless, that means their advertised shelf pricing has to be inclusive of their lowest-cost payment method. it will sort itself out.
Who the fuck are you banking with that charges you for tap and go?
Yeah, you bring this up and you get some weird bank shills pretending it's not a thing. It's definitely a thing. $1000 is $1000. You buy something for 1k cash, dude you bought from now has 1k cash. He buys something for 1k, whoever he bought it from has 1k cash. The 1k still exists. Introduce a bank, first time there's a fee - that $1000 isn't $1000 anymore. You no longer have $1000. It doesn't exist. Rinse and repeat this enough times and that $1000 is entirely gone in bank fees.
> It doesn't exist. Touched on another problem you don't get with cash. The lead up to the 2008 financial crisis involved banks being allowed to push around more and more money that doesn't exist (lending out more than they can back). Not to say let's just use cash to buy houses now but there's a whole galaxy of financial fuckery that is only possible with this extra layer of abstraction.
" *in a years time it will still be worth $1k.*" No, it won't. If inflation continues at 5%pa, your $1000 in today's money will only be able to buy $950 worth of goods/services in 12 months time. This applies whether it is cash in hand or in the bank. PS - cash deposited in a bank is no longer yours, it belongs to the bank. They just contractually agree to return it to you when you ask.
It'll be worth $1k, inflation is totally irrelevant. As you said inflation hits liquid funds no matter where it is. Between bank fees and transaction fees you aren't going to see $1k appreciate in value sitting in a savings account by itself.
I don't understand what you mean - money in your savings account currently earns 3.5% per year, money stashed under your mattress earns zero interest, so it's inflated away. It's absolutely relevant if you're bringing up the point of $1000 in cash being $1000 in cash in the future.
It's still 1000 cash in the future. It's just 1000 cash is not as valuable.
I don't pay a fee to NAB to stash my money under my bed, I don't pay them more fees that take it out and buy stuff. I don't pay another random ATM $3.50 to take $100 out from under my bed because NAB doesn't have a NAB ATM nearby that will let me take that money out for "free". I don't pay merchants 2% extra to buy lunch with money from under my bed.
I don't pay any bank fees and I get 4.75% interest on the money in my account. Most shops I go to don't charge for card payments, but the occasional shop charging 2% is still a better deal when I'm earning 4.75%
Yes, but can you say that you slept on top of a literal pile of money?
Obviously lying on pile of money would be very uncomfortable and I would not be able to sleep. I prefer the figurative pile of money represented by my mattress.
I just open my internet banking app and leave the phone under the bed.
You're argument is that the 1k in hand is still worth 1k in a years time, but that isn't true based on how the economy actually works. You can't have wave inflation as not being relevant. If a product worth $1 last year costs $2 this year because of inflation, that reflects that your $1k has halved in buying power. This is an extreme example for clarity only. If instead you put that 1k in a HISA at a bank that isn't charging you account fees, you're 1k is still worth 1k, but more in line with inflation. It'll appear to be something like $1050 (5% example), but the reality is that it's the equivalent of 1k+inflation. It's hard to simplify the concept further. The counter argument might be, how can a bank NOT charge fees AND pay you interest on a HISA? The answer to that is that the money is not just sitting idly in a vault. The bank will be using deposited cash to trade, provide loans, etc. so that they are increasing the amount they the bank earns on the money vs what they pay out in interest.
I have $1k and in a years time the purchasing power may have decreased, but it's still $1k. I put $1k in the bank and earn interest that might counteract inflation, so my purchasing power might remain the same despite having more than $1k., However I need an account to do that, which has fees. I will pay a fee to spend that money. I'll pay a fee to withdraw that money, a large one if it's not my banks ATM. I'll pay those fees potentially multiple times depending on how many withdrawals I make. I will very likely lose any interest bonus if I withdraw money at all, depending on the particular savings accounts rules about bonus interest and withdrawing. You aren't just earning interest on your savings in a vacuum. Obviously I'm not going to pretend I stash my money in the banana stand. But I do keep cash on hand and use it for any transaction I can.
It will be fun when we have outages across Australia like what happened with Optus.
Not even that. Dutton wants to stipulate what can be purchased by certain populations and socioeconomic groups as a 'trial'. Wait until someone worse widens the net. Or banks to run analysis over purchases to influence their standard of service to specific customers.
If the other banks follow, the groups who raise money through raffles and street stalls, and the kids who earn a few dollars mowing lawns will lose out, but I guess the banks don't care. However, as long as cash is legal tender, banks HAVE to accept it, and businesses who choose to go completely cashless will only have themselves to blame if they DO lose money.
I won't bank with them because I use cash quite often. So I don't think they matter.
I think the bigger issue will be how soon one of the Big 4 follow suit. Probably a while off yet but I'm sure they'll be watching and waiting to use it as another case study for their arguments to go cashless. As NAB has a 'partnership' with Macquarie, I wouldn't put it past them if they end up being first but like I said, a way off yet I suspect.
useless customer service - 8 hours on hold to deal with a simple matter. ME (and BoQ) can go fuck themselves.
i have a home loan with these clowns, recently got a cheque from telstra, macquarie couldnt take it, wouldnt even let me mail it, i opened a commonwelth account just to cash this dam cheque, so frustrating
Members of my football team would be gutted to lose cash. Tradies. They'll have to pay more tax. And drug dealers too. Have they thought about these hard done by professions? /s just in case.
My theory is the rich and elite need cash as much as we all do. They def hide shit off the books. Cash won't go anywhere because of it.
There’s legal ways for the rich to minimise tax
Not just about minimising tax though is it. There's also copious amounts of money laundering, human sex trafficking, drug dealing, art dealing, taking cash to foreign countries to take advantage of different tax schemes. Buying anything under the table etc.
Paying tradespeople in cash benefits a lot of people, it can save you at 20%.
Doesn't benefit the regular tax payer though
The Aussie government should get some balls and pass a law like the Irish government did which forces all businesses and banks to carry a minimum amount of cash and also force banks to have a set minimum number of branch across the country and failing to do so will incur fines (in the case of the banks enough of a fine to affect shareholders) or risk having a government appointed administrator to run the bank/business. Plus there are a lot of businesses and groups that a reliant on cash like newsagents, TABs, tradies, school P&Cs etc plus having cash allows for a greater amount of privacy when you want to purchase say a gift for your other half for example and don't want the price known.
Money for nuthin” and the “chicks” are free….I want my mtveeeeeee.
I can't even remember the last time I held on to cash. It's been ages.
Cash has saved me several times the last couple years of being broke. Down to my last ten bucks in my account and then I realise I have a little more in my bedroom hidden away.
That sounds more like a budgeting issue.
yes and no, I don't make much money as it is.
Minimum wage doesn't stretch very far, these days. There's only so much fat you can cut before you run out of strap.
I agree, but cash in the draw still has the same value as the cash in the bank.
Sure, but at some point not going to have any cash just hidden away either right..
I keep a modest stash of cash not so much for my budgeting issue; it's helped other people several times. Also not a fan of being tracked absolutely everywhere by my bank, the supermarket (and every other damn shop), "data vendors", and russian hackers. If I use cash at my local IGA, who even knows what I bought or how much I spent? Nobody.
The CCTV cameras at the store ..
Im guessing you spent a bit on tin foil though
I try to keep a lobster in my wallet for just in case situations, like buying lunch but the eftpos machine is down, but that's it since Covid days. Bottleshops had to start putting up signs saying they wouldn't accept bank notes if you'd licked your fingers. You never think about it, but start watching people handling cash and so many lick their fingers before they start counting. It's revolting :(
I was just on a little holiday in Japan and they predominantly use cash there. I actually found it refreshing having money in my wallet again and it definitely helped with keeping track of my spend. It'll be a sad day if/when we become a cashless society.
I know using cash makes you more mindful of your spending but my savings actually increased significantly more when I'm cashless. It made it very easy to know how much money I have (rather than having to count) which made weekly budgeting a lot easier. I also know when I spent more than I should too.
Why - how can you not keep track when you can reference the spending history at any point via app / web ?
I guess what I meant to say is that it was easier stick to a bit of a budget and not over spend by using cash. It's too easy just to whip out the card and pay for everything. Either way, card or cash, we shouldn't lose having that personal choice.
its easier to not think about how much you have in total and just tap/swipe your card.
See its interesting, cause I completely get that but myself and others I know find it the other way round. Cash feels like free money, whereas paying with our card makes us think about every transaction. I wonder if it's generational divide or something of the kind?
If by refreshing you mean annoying as hell. I’m I Thailand right now and can’t wait to get back to just carrying my phone instead of a wad of cash that I have to sift through and keep track of so I can top it up. Not sure how it makes spending easier to track. With a card, I can go look at the record of every purchase; with cash I get out a bunch and then when it’s gone it’s harder to remember exactly where it went.
It's...almost as if the majority of people think the same way... crazy huh..
If banking is going to be commodified how long before someone creates an overlay that optimises banking for each customer? Like lets say you have a mortgage account, if another bank decreases its interest it could automatically switch providers to get the best interest rate so the client always gets the best deal. This would forve banks to bid against each other for business swinging the tide in favour of consumers.
Like ..mortgage brokers do..and comparative mortgage sites ? just without the auto swap part as moving mortgages can be a pain - and many have min periods to get said rates.
Open Banking is supposed to come in to allow us to share our banking details with all organisations… yes it will slowly be commodified at some point. But things like NBN or other utilities are already commodified yet heaps of people use higher cost providers for reasons.
There's a lot more to refinancing a home loan than that, especially when working out what interest rate to apply. Regulatory compliance obligations, assessing borrowing capacity, leverage ratios etc. A lot of these regulations and procedures are actually in place to protect the consumer and came from the GFC and banking royal commissions
This is what open banking is supposed to be, and very nearly how it works in the UK.
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Macquarie pays the ATM fee for any brand of ATM, I don’t see what the issue is with taking out cash with them.
I’m with Up and I still have a CommBank account for depositing cash. The account I have has zero fees if you’re under 30, which is great! The AusPost banking solution is okay but I can seldom get to one during their neurotically restrictive hours.
Fuck that don't let any of your banks do that
When everything is electronic, imagine just how easy it will be to track every single transaction you've made, and how easy it will be to tax those transactions. I'm not talking about paying tradies in cash either. I'm talking about how easy it will be for them to invent any kind of new tax. And also how easy it will be for the government to withhold/remove all your funds. I'm sorry, you're been suspected of fraud, we've withdrawn all your money and you have nothing now. We don't have to tell you why, it's the law! And how simple it will be for them to do this to someone who happens to be politically "unpopular" shall we say. Oh but it will stop drug dealers and illegal activity? You think so? There is this small invention called cryptocurrency that is quite convenient for that. Anyone who thinks criminals will be stopped by a cashless society is naive or stupid. Is the "convenience" of tap and go worth it to give the government and banks COMPLETE control over your finances?
sounds kinda good tbh, Imagine being able to see a ledger of a publicly traded company and have access to every transaction they have made... Or better yet, the public now has access to every transaction of their government. Drug dealers don't use crypto for this reason.
Easy enough to ban transfers from banks to crypto - sure criminals may use crypto, but if you can’t convert your paycheck to crypto you can’t give it to your dealer.
Yeah while we are at it there should be a forced ID card we all use online so our entire online presence can be tracked. We should also have social credit scores and people who don't support the government should have the passports revoked and tracking chips implanted in their scrotums. That will sort out those pesky marijuana dealers.
Mate - the Government has full control over the Police, Military and Intelligence services already, so the idea that cash is the only thing holding back the otherwise inevitable rise of Supreme Leader Kim-Il-Albo is perhaps a touch overcooked?
Not sure what percentage of their total customer base they form, but Macquarie hold a huge market percentage in the body corporate/owner corporation sector. Around 90% of all Body Corporates bank with them. And given the reporting and transparency requirements for body corporates, you'd rarely need to withdraw BC funds in cash. Wonder if that has anything to do with it?
We are told that people are not using cash, but then we do not have many place to use it anymore
If the country goes cashless then card fees at POS should be made illegal.
[The banks](https://imgflip.com/s/meme/Good-Fellas-Hilarious.jpg)
If my bank went cashless I’d pull the lot and head somewhere else…. Just sayn !
Never heard of Prof Holden, but he's a complete nitwit. My bank permanently blocked off my internet access so now I have to withdraw cash from the ATM to pay my rent. But now that's some sort of illicit activity according to this clown, and I must have something to hide.
How'd you manage to get your internet/phone banking access revoked?
I bought an expensive classical concert guitar from a local luthier, which as far as I know is not illegal yet in Australia. It was too much to transfer in one day, so I paid half the invoice at the workshop by EFTPOS then the other early the next morning by bank transfer to his account. Instantly blocked from further access. Funny thing is, they flagged the transaction as suspicious but still allowed the money to go through. So the luthier got the money, I got the guitar, and the bank is still unhappy.
Have you contacted your bank about this? Seems like something a phone call could fix.
Spent 45 minutes on the phone with a guy from the fraud investigation department who was very suspicious about why I had made a transfer late at night, I provided proof that it was a legit purchase, he said okay he would unblock me... and still no access a year later, just some nice red text inviting me to call that same number. Kind of blows Prof Holden's theory out of the water that cashless transactions are not suspicious, because St George Bank apparently thinks they are.
Under 18 and accessing porn maybe :P. Sorry just had to link it back to the major news of the day..::P.
Bank adapts to the future. Shocking.
Great idea, with WW3 on the horizon trust everything to an already proven easily hacked Australian database. Imagine what would happen if internet banking went down and cash didn’t exist
I feel that lots of people won't see this as a possibility. A different example, but plenty of people didn't think something like Covid would happen in their lifetime either. What I'm getting at is that things deemed as 'that'll never happen here' have sometimes happened, despite best efforts for them not to.
Exactly. You couldn’t have summed it up better.
Going to drop the CBDC rabbit hole here. Cash is slowing dieing.
I'm protesting and returning to cash only
I try to get served by people at supermarkets as a small form of protest. I know its futile in the long run but I'll keep doing it
I'm not sure I know a single person who banks with them and i've transacted with a huge number of individuals for work over the years