Fri Sep 15, 2023 – 10:05 am EDT
(LifeSiteNews) — Australia’s fifth most valuable bank, Macquarie Bank, has announced that it will no longer allow cash transactions in all its branches, and will begin phasing out all cash, check, and phone payment services from January. There are concerns that it is another incremental step towards the establishment of a cashless society, a slow suffocation designed not to draw too much attention.
In addition to the Macquarie move was the announcement that cash will no longer be available over the counter at some Commonwealth Bank branches in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Macquarie Bank is a global bank; only about 30 per cent of its assets under management are in Australia. It has a small domestic customer base of only 1.7 million. The Commonwealth, Australia’s biggest bank, has ten times that number, meaning any change in its policies on cash availability will have a bigger impact.
There is understandable anxiety in Australia about the move towards a digital-only system, and at first glance it seems the use of cash is fading. According to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) only seven percent of Australians are “high cash users”:
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