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Australia leads advance to cashless society, but warns risks could prove costly
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Australia is making one of the world’s fastest shifts towards being a cashless society.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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SYDNEY – Australia is undergoing its first-ever drop in the amount of cash in circulation as it leads the global advance towards becoming cashless, but the shift has fuelled concerns that communications outages or cyber attacks could leave the economy dysfunctional.
Before Covid-19, Australia was already an early and enthusiastic adopter of online banking, credit cards and mobile phone payment systems. The pandemic accelerated the trend, as customers and retailers preferred contactless payments and the work-from-home trend led to a shift to buy-from-home and online deliveries.
