Would you pay a fee to keep using cash?

Notes, coins and traditional cash are fading away as banks and people take up the convenience of digital payments.

Surveys show that 69% of Australians used cash to transact in 2007. By 2019 this had fallen to 27%, and by 2022 just 13%.

Older people are the highest cash users, with 18%  aged 65 and above classified as high cash users.

By contrast, only 3% of those under the age of 50 were high cash users. About 82% were low cash users.

Cash is especially useful when natural disasters cause power shortages and destroys digital payment systems (this happened during the Optus outage of 2023, when businesses couldn't take payments).

Retaining some level of cash in society is important, even though there are high cash-handling costs for businesses and banks.

Would you ever pay more to use cash?

The Reserve Bank Governor Michelle Bullock has proposed that the dwindling rates of cash use could increase costs for people who rely on cash to make payments - she even floated an idea that there could be fees placed on cash transactions!

Watch more in this ABC video:

As banks cut Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) and even supermarkets like Woolworths have cut cash withdrawal limits from $500 to $200, what do you think will happen with cash?

Apparently more people are hoarding bank notes than spending them.

Would you ever pay more to use cash?