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Cash-in-hand jobs and small retailers endangered in Australia

Categories : Cash connects people
May 8, 2017
Tags : Australia, Central Bank, Costs of payments, Social Inclusion
The new digital payment platform developed by the Reserve Bank of Australia may well accelerate the country's shift to cashless and thus mean the end of small businesses and jobs paid in cash.
Communication Team / Equipo de Comunicación
The Reserve Bank of Australia will soon introduce its New Payment Platform – a major industry initiative aiming to develop a new infrastructure for digital payments. According to various experts, this project should accelerate the country’s shift to digital and make Australia completely cashfree by 2020.
 
Nevertheless, should cash completely disappear, the impact on students and low-income workers who rely exclusively on cash-in-hand jobs would be disastrous. Babysitting, tutoring and mowing lawns are regarded as black market activities by the authorities because revenues are never declared to the tax office. Indeed, cash-in-hand jobs generate extremely low incomes and are usually performed by students seeking to reduce the financial strain on their parents or people waiting for a work permit. 
 
Furthermore, the replacement of cash by e-payments would force small businesses to install EFTPOS terminals and pay fees for each transaction. At present, a business running card machines is charged 1.4% more than a shop accepting only cash. If this cost is easy to absorb for big businesses, it could mean the death of smaller ones. To survive, retailers will have no other option than to increase prices and thus pass on the costs to consumers.
 
The elimination of paper money is supposed to help the government get back millions of dollars in undeclared tax revenue, but it will also close the door to odd jobs and leave no chances for small retailers. A cashless society would also allow the government to monitor and control every single transaction carried out by citizens and businesses alike.
 
To read the original article, please click here.
 
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