Australia’s Largest Bank Considers $3 Fee To Withdraw Cash, But Backs Off After Fierce Criticism

The Commonwealth Bank (CBA), Australia’s largest bank, is facing harsh criticism after it announced plans to charge customers a $3 fee to withdraw cash as part of a growing trend in Australia to go cashless. However, after facing immediate backlash, CBA has said they are delaying plans to implement this fee.

The Guardian reported on Tuesday:

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Australia’s biggest bank announced that customers with a legacy “complete access” account would be shifted into a different product from January 6, with a withdrawal fee “when you take money out at a branch, post office or by phone”.

CBA said in a statement on Tuesday affected customers could still access free cash withdrawals from its ATM network, while some, including those aged under 18, would also qualify for a fee waiver via the new product.

The bank couldn’t immediately quantify how many customers would be affected by having their account changed to a “smart access” transaction account. All up, CBA operated 11.2m retail transaction accounts at the end of last financial year, according to financial documents.

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Stephen Jones, the financial services minister, urged that these plans be overturned.

“This is a kick in the guts for ordinary Australians and the worst Christmas present imaginable. Commonwealth Bank has to rethink this terrible decision,” Jones said. “This seems to me to be a tax on Australians who demand the right to use their cash, and the government won’t stand for it.”

Jones got his wish because CBA reversed course not long after because of an immediate backlash that would have affected roughly 100,000 customers.

CBA’s retail banking services group executive Angus Sullivan said in a statement the bank would inspect its procedures to their plans, admitting the bank had done a “poor job of communicating.” “We are particularly conscious of the impact any change to planned fees and charges can have at this time of year especially given the cost-of-living pressures our customers face,” Sullivan explained.

But Sullivan did indicate that the move to force a transition to a more cashless approach is still the goal. Australia’s 7 News reported: ‘Despite backing down today, the banker says it is an inevitability that customers who want to bank in-person will eventually have to pay for the privilege.’

Australian magazine Money noted earlier this week: “While CBA prided itself on maintaining the largest branch network, it has copped criticism after closing 354 branches and removing 2297 ATMs over the past five years. This made it increasingly difficult for CBA customers to access free cash withdrawal services.”

Australia has been a trailblazer in the global trend to transition into a fully cashless society.

Two banks in the country, BankWest and Macquarie Bank, both announced earlier this year they would be going completely cashless and shuttering most if not all of their branches. Almost a year to the date, Australia reportedly shut down around 1,000 ATMs across the country.

Again, almost one year ago to date, Michele Bullock, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), suggested during a summit meeting that having lending institutions and banks charge customers an additional fee to use cash would aid in the country moving towards a cashless society. She stated at the time:

I think the challenge with cash is that it really does have a big community, public service sort of aura attached to it. If you try to charge people to use cash, they are prepared to pay to get it out of an ATM; but if businesses started charging people to use cash, I suspect there would be a very big backlash.

Having said that, it is also true that as economists, you want people to face the prices of using particular services that reflect the cost of those services. So, at the moment I think we’re probably in a position where it’s very difficult to actually enforce payment for cash – what’s going to happen and what does happen at the moment is that the costs end up embedded in the costs of the financial institutions that are providing the services, and people don’t face them. I think it would be a very big challenge, though, to get people to face the costs of cash.

She went on to note that RBA would be focusing on advancing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), cross-border payments and tokenization.

Richard Holden, professor of economics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Business School, has said that the country will be “functionally cashless” by 2025.

“I’d say we’ll be functionally cashless by the end of 2025 — it’ll just be a complete rarity. But unless the government gets involved to accelerate the process I think we’ll be actually cashless by 2030,” he said.

Anders Sörman-Nilsson, Swedish-Australian futurist, author and managing director of Thinque, also argues that cash will “fade into oblivion” and people will embrace biometrics instead. “Australia will become virtually ‘cashless’ when consumers and businesses realise the friction and frustration involved with handling cash and demand seamless payments,” he said. “When the payment transaction becomes a non-event – when it automatically happens as you exit the restaurant after a delicious meal – then we’re living in a ‘cashless’ society.”

Your intimate payment relationship will be with your wearable, hearable or implantable digital devices, which you and artificial intelligence will train to select the right card for the right purchase. This could be for, say, frequent flyer, foreign exchange or payment term optimization.

As long as you’re happy to carry a chip in your body or on your body, you can proudly claim you’re a walking ATM.

He added

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

This was a feeler – to see how the public would react. You had politicians galore getting on national television threatening to end their accounts, even the Treasurer rebuking the idea – even though the RBA has previously said that a hidden ‘tax cash’ in some capacity should be implemented to force the transition.

Cash use in Australia is reportedly almost non-existent. ‘According to the Australian Banking Association (ABA), just under 99 percent of all customer interactions with banks now occur digitally,’ News.com says.

So even if banks start charging fees for cash withdrawals it really does not matter because the strong majority of Aussies have fully embraced digital in its entirety; and, RBA’s Bullock even admitted in her speech that if banks overtly start taxing cash then people would just threaten to close their accounts and leave, which is exactly what happened with CBA.

While we are not quite there yet, the elimination of cash and going fully digital is the next critical step in laying the foundation for the mark of the beast system. In the meantime, central banks are planning to transition the world to digital IDs, CBDCs and tokenization very soon.

SEE: Tokenization: The New World Order Monetary System To Digitize All Assets And Nature, Including You

Revelation 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: [17] And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. [18] Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

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