Australia’s Regulators Are Planning for Cash Failure — Not Cash Success

By Frane Maroevic, Director General, International Currency Association

In Australia, regulators are sketching out a future where cash is expected to falter — not one where it is supported to succeed. The Council of Financial Regulators (CFR) and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) are consulting on a new framework for the cash industry. Their four principles — access, sustainability, resilience and efficiency — sound constructive. But hidden in the details are “crisis resolution powers” designed for a system already assumed to collapse.

Proposal 5 of the consultation paper reveals the intent clearly: regulators want emergency powers for the day when major cash-in-transit providers fail, when ATMs vanish, or when banks retreat further from cash services. The focus is on how to clean up a crisis, not how to prevent one.

Yet the data tells a different story:

• Cash in circulation hit another all-time record in 2025, now more than AUD 104 billion.
• The Reserve Bank of Australia notes 70% of Australians still carry cash daily.
• Withdrawals rose in June 2025, despite banks slashing access.
• Choice reports that 97% of Australians support a mandate requiring businesses to accept cash.

In other words, Australians continue to demand cash — even as banks dismantle the infrastructure that supplies it. Since 2017, more than 8,300 ATMs have disappeared. Entire towns are being left behind. And policies from banks like ANZ’s “cashless branches” or Macquarie’s refusal to guarantee access make life harder for millions, particularly older Australians, rural communities, and those who cannot or will not rely on digital tracking.

What Australia Needs Is Not Crisis Management — but a Plan for Success

Instead of preparing for collapse, policymakers could choose to strengthen the role of cash:

1. Mandate acceptance of cash across all retailers, supermarkets, and public bodies.
2. Guarantee access to cash in every town, suburb and community — through ATMs, bank branches, and supermarket services.
3. Reaffirm cash as legal tender, not just in law but in practice, for everything from utility bills to rent.
4. Require banks and supermarkets to support distribution, rather than retreat from it.

Cash is not a relic in Australia; it is a public good. The Reserve Bank itself admits 1.5 million Australians rely on it for daily purchases. It remains a store of wealth, a safeguard against outages, and a symbol of financial freedom.

To plan for cash failure is to fail the public. To plan for cash success is to strengthen choice, resilience and inclusion. The question facing Australia is not whether cash has a future — the record circulation numbers answer that. The question is whether policymakers will protect that future or simply prepare the paperwork for its decline.