24th May 2021 | Business
More than three in 10 Australians say going entirely cash-free and transitioning to just electronic payments would be a great decision for the country, reveals a new survey.
Further, 51 per cent of Australians admit to paying in cashless often since the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a survey from MoneyTransfers.com.
Overall, Australia ranked 10th in the survey, with India leading the charge with 79 per cent saying they would like to have a cashless society.
In the second position is Malaysia at 65 per cent, followed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Indonesia in joint third place at 63 per cent.
At the other end of the scale, France placed last, with only 18 per cent of French citizens saying they would welcome their country being entirely dependent on electronic forms of payment.
At the joint second to last were the United States and Sweden, with only 24 per cent of people in both countries feeling that a cashless society would be a good thing for the country.
Electronic forms of money refer to debit cards, credit cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay and other forms of electronic payment methods.
A total of 25,823 individuals were surveyed for the research, including 1,058 from Australia.
The research comes as the world has moved towards cashless transactions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as fears over social distancing and minimum physical contact remain at the top of the mind of consumers.
Further, a report from the Reserve Bank of Australia found that contactless payments were a long-term trend even before the pandemic, with the share of in-person payments made by tapping a debit or credit card on a card terminal increasing to 50 per cent in 2019, up from 10 per cent in 2013.
“Consumers are using cards more frequently for payments of all sizes and the adoption of contactless functionality has facilitated particularly strong growth in the use of cards for low-value transactions in recent years,” the RBA said.
“For example, the share of in-person payments of $10 or less that were made with cards rose by 20 percentage points relative to three years earlier, to 51 per cent in 2019.”
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