The debate of whether we were entering a cashless society era was brewing.<\/p>\n
A decade later, the discussion continues. <\/p>\n
For years, more stores have no longer accepted cash as payment, and it\u2019s easy to see why, with 94% of transactions in 2024 being digital. They\u2019re also not obligated to either.<\/p>\n
In New Zealand, there are no rules to protect cash. If a business doesn\u2019t want to accept it, they don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand found that cash usage for everyday purchases had decreased from 95.8% in 2019 to 57.2% that year.<\/p>\n
Apparently, just 8% of New Zealanders were regular or daily cash users. <\/p>\n
But today<\/a>, the Reserve Bank opened public consultation on a proposal that would force banks to set up hundreds, if not thousands, of additional ATMs and branches to make sure people have access to cash.<\/p>\n NZ Herald Wellington business editor, Jen\u00e9e Tibshraeny, told The Front Page<\/a> that the proposal suggests banks should be required to ensure free-to-use cash services were within walking distance in urban areas and driving distance in rural areas, in most cases.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Reserve Bank has worried that over the past decade, about 40% of bank branches have closed. It\u2019s concerned that people don\u2019t have easy enough access to services that help them trade in cash,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The Reserve Bank has said that if banks opted to set up multi-bank, full-service cash sites, they would need to create 1288 of these.<\/p>\n Currently, there are five nationwide.<\/p>\n If banks met the standard by only working alone, they would need to more than double the number of ATMs and branches they have.<\/p>\n There are currently 2159 bank-owned sites offering partial cash services. That\u2019d need to grow to 3013 branches or ATMs.<\/p>\n Director of money and cash, Ian Woolford, estimated that the benefits of this proposal would \u201cfar outweigh the costs\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cGiving the public an appropriate level of cash services provides benefits to New Zealand of $2.83 billion per annum, at an additional annual cost to banks of around $104 million.<\/p>\n \u201cThis cost is negligible when compared to the more than $10 billion annual pre-tax profits earned together by the banking sector,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Public consultation on this cash services standard is open for six weeks, closing Friday April 10.<\/p>\n Listen to the full episode<\/a> to hear more about:<\/p>\n The value of cashGenerational dividesDigital cash and payments modernisationWhere to next?<\/p>\n The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime\/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.<\/p>\n You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The debate of whether we were entering a cashless society era was brewing. A decade later, the discussion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,6932,41107,219,1668,29419,185,9860,117,111,139,69,691,28630,5970,3271,6100,223,80],"class_list":["post-301164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-cash","tag-cashless","tag-economy","tag-front","tag-go","tag-is","tag-king","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-or","tag-page","tag-really","tag-should","tag-still","tag-the","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}