Most coin operated machines are in places where there isn’t someone immediately at hand to collect them, so you have to pay someone to go around and collect the coins.
Smaller money means the same value of money takes less physical space - so an existing machine would need to be emptied less frequently, making it more viable to continue to accept cash.
That a business can or does accept cards doesn’t matter - if you’re accepting coins at all, then they need to be emptied.
I didn’t really care about the size and weight of our coins until I became aware of the sheer weight of $100 worth of silver coins. Inventory staff for the business I work for offer bank-like facilities (including supply of change) to various vendors, and having to go through 20 or 30 bags that weigh close to 10kg when counting cash on hand or putting away a change delivery is absolutely exhausting.
All for a weight reduction and a size reduction - ideally the 5c would be bumped and the silver would all drop down a size (10c becomes 5c, 20c becomes 10c etc). Our 50cent piece is currently the largest, heaviest coin in regular circulation on a global scale. I don’t think our $1 or $2 coins need to be changed though.
I can sympathise with this. I worked in a registered club when I was at uni and used to have to clear thousands of dollars worth of coins from over one hundred poker machines. This was back in the days before note acceptors became common and machines still accepted .05c, .10c and .20c coins. Lifting hoppers, boxes full of coins from under machines, counting and bagging the money was back breaking work.
I wasn’t happy to discover recently that none of the machines at Star Casino in Sydney even accepted $1 coins anymore. Notes only. I wonder if that came about because of the number of compo claims for bad backs from doing poker machine clearances?
I’m one of these dinosaurs who still prefers to use cash for most things. I get very shitty when I see supermarkets converting more of their self service checkouts to “card only”.
That console full of coinage in the car still comes in handy for bread and milk or a cup of coffee. I’d hate see coins phased out completely.
It’s already been 25 years since the 1c and 2c were phased out. The 5c will still be around come 2020 (there aren’t any formal plans to remove it from circulation yet and it’s a 2-3 year process) and so, unless inflation goes nuts between now and then, we will probably only just be thinking about the future of the 10c coin in 20 years time let alone the larger denominations.
My view is that there will always be a role for cash in our society and that coins will actually be more useful in the long-term than some of the large notes. We tend to use cash for small transactions (ie under $10), not large ones and so IMO the $50 and $100 notes will become obsolete (in general circulation at least) long before the 50c coin let alone $1 and $2.
I’m not sure about Australia specifically but in the UK it’s estimated that one in thirty £1 coins are counterfeit.
I always keep $20 in my wallet, becuase sometimes eftpos machines can be temepermental little pricks. I know a place I go to once every few months, don’t have a eftpos machine (it’s cash only). So I always keep cash just in case if i run into that problem elsewhere.
I never use Apply Pay or Samsung Pay (i have both phones) . Never felt the need to use those sorts of payments.
I use cash at cafes and stores always. I break notes and take the coins home, throw them in a jar and use that as a savings mechanism. It’s a neat mental trick to fool myself into thinking I’ve spent more than I have.
In the last three weeks I’ve accumulated $80 in coins.
The back breaking work is another reason that businesses are trying to push customers away from using cash. There’s a huge expense moving cash (especially coins but also cash) around, including security, so card payments (even with their fees) are cheaper for the businesses (especially when they pass on the fees to customers).
I doubt that there will “always” be cash. Other than illicit activities I don’t see a need for cash to still exist in a century and don’t believe it will. @OnAir isn’t the only one who has already stopped using cash.
I have my concerns about the privacy implications of cash disappearing but apart from those & the occasional outages (NAB’s repeated issues a while back definitely put me off from ever opening an account with them), I see the use of cash is diminishing.
One big turn-off about going cash free is the surcharge that businesses can put on small transactions. Was at a take-away coffee place yesterday and they charge you an extra 50cents for transactions under $10. What a rort/rip-off for a $3.50 coffee.
It wasn’t fraud, but there used to be a substantial amount of New Zealand 20c coins in circulation in Australia the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the odd coin from the odd Pacific island nation. They were the same size as the equivalent Australian coin.
Has anyone been in the new look Aldi stores? F**k they’re nice, the Bathurst store just recently opened after a refurbishment. Really nice. Judging by Bathurst’s standards.
I understand that was caused by the Australian Mint as it minted those countries coins (reusing an existing design), and 4 decades later the 20c piece hasn’t changed; so do you think there’s a good chance of several coins changing any time soon?
It varies but for a take away coffee, it’s usually between $3.50 and $4 for a regular and $3.80 to $4.60 for a large from the places I frequent. There’s a cart at my gym that’s even cheaper at $3 and $3.50 and he uses good quality coffee so that’s a bargain.