Is the brand new $100 observe, out October, the final replace to a banknote we’ll see?

The nation’s central financial institution has been busy designing and printing a brand new $100 invoice in anticipation of getting them into public wallets, bringing to a detailed a banknote redesign program a long time within the making. 

However the rollout of a redesigned hundred greenback invoice — the final within the sequence of subsequent era notes — comes because the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates the downfall of money and the general public embraces newer cost applied sciences, based on the nation’s central financial institution.

New money for an economic system going cashless

About 400 million new $100 notes will probably be launched into circulation from October 29. The Reserve Financial institution of Australia (RBA) has been printing the notes in preparation because the center of final 12 months. 

Governor Philip Lowe described the discharge as a giant logistical train and mentioned it would take time for the brand new notes to turn into broadly accessible.

“Australians ought to really feel happy with our banknotes,” he mentioned, on the time of the revealing. “They’re progressive and comprise world-leading security measures that hold the banknotes safe.”

The RBA deliberate the brand new line of banknotes to maintain forgery charges low in a challenge first began in 2007. The redesigned $100 invoice contains a clear top-to-bottom window that has a lot of safety parts together with a flying owl and a reversing quantity ‘100’.

Like the opposite banknotes within the sequence, the redesigned $100 invoice additionally has a ‘tactile’ function to assist the imaginative and prescient impaired distinguish between totally different denominations.

The invoice continues to honour Sir John Monash, an engineer, soldier and civic chief; and Dame Nellie Melba, a famend soprano who carried out in Australia, Europe and the USA.

It replaces a banknote launched as a part of a sequence in 1992; nonetheless, the previous banknote can nonetheless be used to make purchases.

Within the subsequent 25 years, will money nonetheless be round?

When the RBA first performed its Shopper Fee Methodology survey in 2007, 69 per cent of individuals used money to routinely make funds. However that quantity has dropped within the final dozen years to simply 27 per cent — and consultants count on the autumn to solely hasten. 

The RBA survey — performed each three years and documenting about 1100 individuals’s weekly cost habits — gives an perception into the declining recognition of money. The latest was performed in October and November 2019, previous the coronavirus pandemic.

“Australians are persevering with to change to digital cost strategies instead of money for his or her day-to-day transactions,” RBA authors James Caddy, Luc Delaney and Chay Fisher mentioned.

“Debit playing cards have been probably the most ceaselessly used technique of cost in 2019, overtaking money as the only mostly used cost technique for the primary time.”

Total, debit and bank cards accounted for 63 per cent of funds in 2019, representing an 11 per cent enhance because the final report three years earlier.

And the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic is more likely to have widened the hole between money and card, the RBA mentioned. 

“Extra not too long ago, the change to digital cost strategies is more likely to have accelerated on account of shopper and service provider responses to COVID-19,” the authors mentioned.

“… ATM withdrawals fell by 49 per cent and 38 per cent respectively from February to April 2020,” earlier than considerably rebounding in Might and June. 

There was one banknote that elevated in recognition as a result of pandemic. 

“The function of money as a precautionary retailer of wealth in occasions of uncertainty has been evident through the COVID-19 pandemic,” the RBA authors mentioned, “the place there was a major enhance in demand for high-denomination banknotes," equivalent to $100 payments.