When I left for America, I was surprised at how few places accepted electronic payment methods compared to our experience in Australia. By the time we left the USA barely two years later, that was not a problem – almost everywhere took cards.
Except … now, we’re back in Australia, and things have gone backward. Few places have EFTPOS now. It’s actually hard to pay electronically. Where I live, it’s impossible to buy coffee using EFTPOS, debit or credit cards.
I bet it is because the local Big 4 banks are cutting their noses off to spite themselves. It leads me to believe we are entering the downward spiral into luddite non-use of electronic payments. We may have seen “peak” EFTPOS rollouts, and it’s all downhill from here.
We’ll be a cash society soon, and this is incredibly bad. So many things that were once trivial to do require effort to do. It will cut economic output. Folks like me who refuse to pay the “disloyalty” fees at ATMs just will not buy at places without card machines when I run out of cash.
This is bad news for the local economy, bad news for the banks, and bad news for employment. And bad news for me because I do not get a good cup of coffee and I’m pissed off.
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