Unlock the Power of eSignature Lawfulness for Banking in Australia

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uh and I will turn to Senator Roberts thank you chair my questions and thank you for attending today my questions initially go to The Reserve Bank and then if there's time to a c uh to The Reserve Bank cash is legal tender isn't it part of A bank's social license a duty of a bank to provide access to legal tender well the banks obviously do provide um cash Services um they the services they provide to their customers are in their own business models um The Reserve Bank doesn't have any mandate to legislate or to regulate access to cash Services uh so uh that's really a matter for the banks and for providing those services to their customers so banks will usually provide the services their customers look to access and as long as customers want to access cash Services Banks should provide it so that so I'm I would have imagined that and I'm not an experienced in your area but I would have imagined that as part of being a bank it would have been requirement to be able to uh provide legal tender cash not correct well there's no um there's no obligation to provide legal legal tender services that I'm aware of from the banks but I'm not an an expert in that space but certainly the position that we we see is that the Australian public many members of the Australian public still want to use cash as a means of payment and they access that cash from their Banks so the consumers still want to use cash although a much smaller proportion of consumers wish to use cash but there are still consumers who do use it and do need to use it and so if that is a product that the banks need to provide to their consumers because the consumers demand access to it okay I would have thought it was a responsibility almost a condition of having a banking license but let's continue in your submission you state quote the cash share of payments by consumers in Regional areas fell from 35% in 2019 to 14% in 2022 what is your measure used for cash share please since the Reserve Bank isn't notified when someone buys a cup of coffee at a cafe with cash for instance how did you arrive at these figures my hand that's my colleague uh I believe the the numbers that you're talking about are most likely um come from our consumer payment survey which is a something that the Reserve Bank does every three years where it um ask people to essentially fill in a diary of every payment that they make over the course of a week um so we have quite detailed information um spread across different demographics and different locations of how people are making the making their payments I don't have those precise figures in front of me but um when we're talking about the cash share of payments then um most most often we're referring to the to the results of that consumer payment survey thank you um Mr Fisher the um could you tell could could we get those figures on notice please yeah of course the numbers that I do have in front of me um um that the cash share of payments in 2022 was a little under 10% for people living in uh Regional and remote areas and actually what the 2022 service showed that that wasn't all that different from people living in in the major in the major cities but that's not to say that some people don't use cash much more intensively including in those Regional um and remote areas and and it doesn't show the the severity of um not not not being able to access cash for some people it is crucial because they do everything in cash yes that's that's right and one one thing that we do do from the consumer payment survey is you can classify people into how intensively how intensively they use cash and what that shows is that um something like one in 120 people during that survey week use cash for all their inperson payments um and it does show that certain demographic uh groups tend to use cash um a lot more intensively than others even though um those shares have been declining over time okay thank you the evidence is clear from previous hearings of this committee that um banks are trying to drive down the use of cash destroy the use of cash that's quite clear um cash could be circulating more than you state without your knowledge does this figure provide air cover for the banks war on cash without having solid basis in fact aart from a survey I I I can't comment on the on the issue of whether it's providing uh cover for the banks but what I can say is that the survey is designed to be very comprehensive um it's the best measure of cash use that we have um it surveys a significant number of people and a lot of effort um uh by the survey firm goes into making sure that it's representative of the Australian population so we do have a reasonbly a good picture a good snapshot at a particular point in time of how people are using cash across the economy now I understand just as a side point that the Reserve Bank of Australia has done work on abl lishing a digital currency that's correct right uh that's well we are like many central banks around the world we are doing some experiments and some analysis of a digital currency but we have not um we're still working through that and there are no direct plans to establish a digital currency okay thank you let's get back to the um the cash figures a merchant who can't deposit cash in their bank because the bank has been closed uh and who can't deposit in an ATM because their ATM has been ripped out is not going to accept cash they can't Bank can't use to pay to suppliers Insurance advertising and rent isn't it true Regional Merchants are no longer accepting cash because they can't use that cash in their businesses I think uh what what I might speak to there um Senator is the analysis that we do which I believe some of might have been in our previous submission which is that our overall assessment is that access to cash in terms of the distance that people have to travel for withdrawal and deposit Services hasn't changed a great deal in recent years um the nature of those Services may have changed though um if a if a bank branch is is closed people may have to either travel a little bit further to access full branch style services or switch to an alternative um source of of of cash access and you know I think it is a reasonable to say that the elements of the what you can call the cash cycle are interrelated cash use cash access um and cash acceptance are all I guess pieces of the of the um total cash use uh puzzle thank you that's a very important point you've made because if the banks want to drive people off cash uh so they can get Fe access so they can get fees and greater income from from handling uh digital transactions uh then then they can um use use what you just said I don't really speak to the motivations of the bank but I think it's reasonable to suggest that that there there's different elements of the cash use cycle that are that are related and we've um published some uh analysis on the different elements of the cashu cycle um in one of our bulletin articles which I'd be happy to to provide to the committee if that's of interest thank you um let's get back to the alternative sources of cash other than Bank in some towns isn't it true that post officers have a role to play and providing cash but they are not Banks they do not have after hours ATMs when most people take out money I think um in in the analysis that I referred to a moment ago talking about the distance to cash access points one of the one of the reasons that the distance most people have to travel on average you say on average it's different the further remote you go um one of the reasons why that hasn't changed a great deal in recent years is because of the the strong Geographic coverage of alternative points like um like Banker post outlets and you know I think it is a a relevant question of of whether those offer you know full Ranch services and and and I think um you know I think I think that I definitely think that's a a relevant a relevant question those alternative means of accessing cash that that I mentioned a moment ago they might not be perfect substitutes um for full banking services for example so there is a need for um potentially post office or Postal bank or a People's Bank to have greater role than they do right now uh to provide for banking services potentially