Earlier this year, the federal government flagged it plans to require businesses to accept cash as payment for essentials.
But as cash use continues to decline, its role in the flow of money is becoming more niche.
Here's what to know about where cash use currently stands in Australia.
Weren't businesses already required to accept cash?
There's a common misconception that all businesses operating in Australia must accept cash because it's legal tender.
That's not the case.
According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, current laws allow businesses to choose which payment types they accept.
But it notes vendors should be upfront with customers if they choose to go cashless.
So what does legal tender actually mean?
The Macquarie Dictionary defines it as "currency which may be lawfully tendered or offered in payment of money debts and which may not be refused by creditors".
In practice, that means businesses are allowed to set the commercial terms of payment before a contract is entered into.
The Reserve Bank of Australia says if a business "specifies other means of payment prior to the contract, then there is usually no obligation for legal tender to be accepted as payment".
But if other means of settlement weren't specified in advance, cash can't be refused as payment of an existing debt.
Is cash going to be around much longer?
The use of cash has been steadily declining in recent decades.
In 2022, cash made up just 13 per cent of in-person transactions, compared with almost 70 per cent in 2007.
A look at the age of cash users can give us more of a glimpse at where its usage will head in the future, too.
The 2022 Consumer Payment Survey found cash use is highest among older Australians.
Of the respondents aged over 65, 18 per cent were considered high cash users — that is, those who use cash for at least 80 per cent of their in-person transactions.
That rate drops substantially among younger demographics, where only three per cent of those aged under 50 were found to be high cash users.
The data also suggested improved digital payment infrastructure has contributed to the trend.
Concerns about some merchants only accepting cash, payments to friends and poor internet access were less present among respondents in 2022 compared with just three years prior.
The survey's findings indicate there's still room for the trend to continue downward as young Australians shirk shrapnel and digital payments become increasingly accessible.
In June 2023, Peter Martin, a visiting fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, wrote that pure data extrapolation suggests cash has "less than a decade to go" but will "probably hang around for longer" as a back-up that maintains privacy.
Is there still a need for cash?
Yes.
One of the biggest arguments for maintaining cash payment options is its role during outages.
Physical notes and coins can act as a back-up during weather events or technology failures, like the global CrowdStrike outage, that take payment networks offline.
A spokesperson for the Reserve Bank of Australia added that in addition to acting as a fallback payment option, "cash remains an important means of payment for some people and is widely held for precautionary or store-of-wealth purposes".
"For these reasons, the RBA places a high priority on the community continuing to have reasonable access to cash withdrawal and deposit services."
Are businesses allowed to charge debit card surcharges?
While it's legal for businesses to add a surcharge to debit card transactions, the rules could be about to change.
In October, the federal government announced $2.1 billion in funding for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to tackle excessive surcharges.
The government also flagged it would be willing to ban the fees altogether from January 1, 2026, subject to further work from the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Debit card surcharges are where a business adds a small fee to an item or service's cost if a customer pays with an electronic payment — that is, through EFTPOS.
That extra charge is designed to cover the cost of processing the payment.
While debit card surcharges are currently legal in Australia, there are numerous countries where that's not the case.
Australian Banking Association chief executive Anna Bligh is supportive of reviewing the laws around surcharges as cash becomes increasingly obsolete.
"I very much welcome this review because the rules are 20 years old," she told 6PR in October.
"If you think about it, 20 years ago, most of us, the only card we used was a credit card.
"The world has changed. It's unrecognisable since the rules were made, and it's well overdue that we had a really good look at this."
