A new report from CashWelcome.ORG highlights the importance of cash to Australia's economy.

In April 2024, Australians made 29,582,300 withdrawals from 23,945 ATMs, 308,900 more than in April 2022 (29,273,500 withdrawals from 25,207 ATMs). In April 2024 Australians withdrew a total of $90.1 billion (average cash withdrawal is $304.46) up from $8.56 billion in November 2022 (average withdrawal was $292.48).

The total value of banknotes on issue in Australia has risen from around $60 billion ten years ago to over $100 billion in June 2024. The value of banknotes on issue has been trending up over ten years and jumped up during the COVID-19 pandemic period (2020 – 2022).

In mid-2023, some media commentators declared that Australia had hit ‘peak cash’ and predicted steep falls in the value of cash on issue. Over the last 12 months this has not happened. The value of cash on issue has levelled off at the record level of around $101 billion. On the 29^th May 2024, there was $101.2 billion worth of RBA banknotes on issue in Australia.

New 2024 survey data from YouGov suggests that cash remains popular with young people, with more than half of millennials (born 1981-1996)reporting they like to use cash when making purchases.

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Only 27% of very young Australians (Gen Z, 1997 – 2009) say they do not like to use cash when making purchases. Across all age groups, from Gen Z to Baby Boomers, cash remains more popular than not.

New research from payments app Waave found 71 per cent of Australians are concerned about going completely cashless.

Since the end of the pandemic and the recovery of the physical economy, the usage of cash has increased in the economy. The rate of decline in the number of cash access points and bank points of presence in the economy no longer matches with community demand for cash.

The value of monthly ATM cash withdrawals is up 4.5 per cent in the year to May 2024, reports the RBA. The number of ATM cash withdrawals is up 2.1 per cent in the year to May 2024.

There is no decline in the number or value of ATM cash withdrawals, despite fewer ATMs.

Increasing number of outages and privacy concerns are fueling a trend towards people carrying physical cash ‘just in case.’

The Optus outage in November 2023 and the CrowdStrike outage of July 2024, plus many other smaller system problems have dented community confidence in the reliability of cashless payment systems.

The EcoCash outage in Zimbabwe 2019 killed that nation’s cashless experiment.

The governor of the Reserve Bank advises her own children to never leave the house without cash.

"I had no sympathy for my son when his card didn't work and he had no cash on him at the petrol station," Michelle Bullock told the AusPayNet Summit on Monday 12 December. 

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