Belle Taylor: Is the fight to save cash a losing battle?

Deep in my wallet, hidden among the thousands of receipts and loyalty cards from 50 different cafes all with a single stamp, is a crisp, $20 note (I know, I know, humble brag). I call it my emergency Stupid Croissant Money. Meaning it is intended for a completely ridiculous purchase: an $8.50 farmers market croissant, a novelty fridge magnet, a banh mi lunch while my leftovers from home sit in the office fridge. Using it isn’t like spending real money: the stuff that appears all too briefly in your bank account before you exchange it for half a bag of groceries and a quarter tank of petrol. Cash isn’t like that — it’s play money, a weird little piece of paper I can exchange for goods and services and stupid overpriced croissants. It wasn’t too long ago that the opposite was true. Swiping a card and signing a little slip of paper felt like magic, whereas cold hard cash was what we paid for real stuff with. Now, Australians are one of the world’s biggest users of cashless payments. A whopping 98.9 per cent of bank transactions are done online. And even bank cards are getting the boot, with one-third of in-person card payments made with mobile phones. Pretty soon, technology will be so advanced we will be able to just imagine paying for something and the money will disappear from our account, a system I seem to be an early adopter of. Yet the relentless march towards a cashless society had a small hold-up this week as the Albanese Government announced a proposal to mandate certain businesses to accept cash, like supermarkets, petrol stations and healthcare providers. None of which fall into my Stupid Croissant Money category, but I guess they have other uses. The disappearance of cash has lots of people concerned. In April this year, a group of pro-cash advocates initiated “Draw Out Some Cash Day”, when they encouraged people to hit up a hole in the wall for some cold hard cash. I am shocked anyone knew where to find an ATM. The only way I can get any cash any more is by flogging stuff online from my garage. Every time I need more Stupid Croissant Money I have to sell off a tub of Hot Wheels and a bag of baby clothes. There are lots of positives about keeping cash around. There are no hidden fees. If your phone runs out of batteries you can still grab that coffee, and there are some things cash just makes more sense for — buying stuff at garage sales, tooth-fairy transactions, diving into a giant pile of coins Scrooge McDuck style, swear jars. But if so few people are spending cash that the Government has to mandate certain businesses to still accept it, cash advocates might be fighting a losing battle.