The Change Mariner

The banknote is dead: electronic money rules

The Age (Australia)

Banks are forcing us towards a cashless economy - and, really, what's wrong with that? By Ross Gittins.

The banks are winning in their campaign to cut their costs by changing the way we handle money and pay our bills.

They are keeping us out of their branches, killing off the cheque, moving us onto the internet, making money less tangible and pushing us towards the cashless economy.

They are doing all this with the transaction fees they charge - or rather, with the way those fees are structured.

They are doing it with a single motivation: to increase their profits (though, paradoxically, more by cutting their costs than by increasing their revenue from fees).

But their efforts to change our banking behaviour are assisted by a powerful factor: for all but the most set-in-their-ways, the new ways of handling money are more convenient.