Digital $A coming soon, despite tech fails

Last week the RBA’s systems failed leaving thousands of Australians without fast personal payments. The New Payments Platform powers OSKO real time payments that are used by many Aussies to send money to other people via their phone number or email address. The Reserve Bank said in a statement that an error occurred during a planned change to the software

What happened to the Cashless Society?

ATM cash withdrawals are trending up and there’s more cash on issue than ever before. New data from the Reserve Bank of Australia reveals the number of ATM cash withdrawals is trending up in 2022. The value of cash withdrawals is stable, indicating that cash is being withdrawn for daily use, not for hoarding. RBA data also shows the total amount of cash on

Afterpay Day: You’re paying for it

Afterpay Day is a promotion of buy now pay later debt running from Thursday 17th to the 20th March. Consumers can win prizes, get discounts or exclusive ‘drops’ if they choose to BNPL debt rather than paying outright for purchases. Afterpay and other BNPL lenders charge retailers 4 per cent (or more) and ban them from recovering the fee from consumers. Yesterday, the Buy

Young people discover cash and hashtag it

#CashStuffing and #100EnvelopeChallenge showcase young people rediscovering cash Wednesday 23 February 2022: Young people and students in Australia, New Zealand and globally are rediscovering cash – and hash tagging it.  Controlling their budget and saving for goals are the key reasons why increasing numbers of young people are rejecting phone, card and Buy Now Pay Later payments apps to use cash.

Government must get tough on Online Gambling

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services is holding hearings on Friday 13 August 2021 into the use of credit cards to pay for online gambling. Committee Chair, Andrew Wallace MP has expressed his concern about the “cost consequences” on families from allowing the use of credit cards and digital wallets to fund online gambling. These concerns are shared by many submissions to the

Missing Meals to pay off BUY NOW PAY LATER debts

Buy Now Pay Later users are missing meals and essentials to pay their debts, more government data has confirmed. Services like Afterpay, ZipCo, Humm, LayBuy and others are leading young people (in particular) into financial hardship, despite not being classified as credit providers. There are reportedly 9.1 million active BNPL accounts in Australia. 21% of BNPL users rack up late fees, ASIC has reported while 20%

Cash – Don’t leave home without it

When I have cash in my pocket, I’m in charge. Don’t leave home without it.

Aristocrat ‘aggressively’ moving gambling behind closed doors.

COVID ‘leveraged’ to promote home gaming Aristocrat Leisure Limited (ASX:ALL) is successfully transitioning gamblers to online and digital apps and games and away from ‘physical’ gaming venues such as community based pubs and clubs. This is removing problem gambling from public sight, away from the oversight of regulators, containing the issue to homes. Monitoring, welfare checks and harm minimisation efforts

Payment system ‘outages’ kill cashless economy myth

Osko, CBA failures just the latest to leave customers stranded. Today, reported problems with ‘Osko’ payments between banks facilitated by the New Payments Platform are leaving bank customers stranded and angry. Customers of all banks have reported the failure of the “Osko” real time transfer system to their banks overnight on the 27 April and the morning of 28 April

RBA data doesn’t support Cashless Australia predictions

USA based FIS issued a report predicting Australia would be largely cashless by 2024. FIS specialise in merchant payment solutions and supporting and securing cashless transactions. The FIS findings are not supported by real world data or readily available market information, for example: Last month, the Reserve Bank of Australia reported that, while cash’s share of payments has fallen, cash