From The Daily Reckoning:
Pablo & Rusty’s is a successful, Sydney based coffee roaster.
They have recently opened a new location in Brisbane where they are
trialling something different: they do not take cash.
The only accepted payment methods are credit cards, phones or smart
coffee cups —yes, those colourful cups with a chip that are springing at
coffee shops everywhere.
Wait, no cash at all? Isn’t that illegal?
After all, Australian notes have printed— in very small font — ‘This Australian note is legal tender throughout Australia and its territories’.
So, don’t they have to accept them?
Well, not really. Take a look at this snippet from the RBA’s website:
‘However although transactions are to
be in Australian currency unless otherwise agreed or specified, and
Australian currency has legal tender status, Australian banknotes and
coins do not necessarily have to be used in transactions and refusal to
accept payment in legal tender banknotes and coins is not unlawful.’
So, at Pablo & Rusty’s coffee shop in Brisbane, your cash is not even worth the polymer material it is printed on.
And I suspect more retailers will start to follow the coffee shop’s
initiative. After all, there are many benefits to not having cash at the
premises as Pablo & Rusty’s founder and MD, Saxon Wright told
Gizmodo:
‘Your insurance premiums go down,
cash handling errors go down, risk of theft goes down, the time it takes
to cash off and go to the bank at the end of the day is eliminated.’
Retailers are not the only ones following this trend. Cash is
becoming less common in the world. And whole countries are actually
moving towards eliminating cash.
Sweden, Switzerland and Finland are aiming to put an end to cash by 2025, to fight criminal activity and fraud.
According to The Guardian, cash transactions in Sweden make up 2% of
the value of all payments made last year. They are in track to become a
cashless society in five years.
Yet going cashless
does not decrease the chance of getting robbed. In Sweden, electronic
and credit card fraud have almost doubled in the last decade....MORE
