Popping down to the local to grab Roll’d for lunch? Leave your coin purse at home.
The popular Vietnamese food franchise doesn’t want your money — well, at least not your coins and notes.
These days it’s “cashless” payments or nothing at Roll’d, and if chief executive Bao Hoang has anything to say about it, that won’t be changing anytime soon.
“We’ve already gone cashless, and we’ll stay cashless throughout the pandemic,” Hoang says.
“It was always the trend anyway, but now less contact is always going to be better, particularly when we’re talking about COVID-19 without a vaccine.”
That “trend” Hoang refers to is an ongoing process towards an oft-idealised “cashless society”; a perhaps not-too-distant future where metal and paper-based fiat currencies give way to their digital equivalents.
You’ve probably heard this before. The prospective death of paper-based currency has been a recurring prognosis since the invention of EFTPOS in 1981, and last year, Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe said it’s easier than ever to envisage the future of cash as a “niche” payment method.
But that was then, this is now. As the coronavirus crisis changes how business is done around the world, economic timelines are being redrawn, and the life expectancy of those notes in your pocket is no exception.
Where cash was shrinking into a niche, it is now in full blown retreat, as firms from the UK to the United States and Singapore reportedly ditch paper currency in droves.
At home, even major supermarkets Coles and Woolworths have declared their preference for tap-and-go payments as they seek to sanitise their operations.
Recently, a survey panel of 1000 consumers published by cashless cheerleaders Mastercard claimed 44% of Aussies have decreased their use of cash since the pandemic began.
Even before the pandemic, Hoang says about 60% of Roll’d transactions were card-based, but by the time a vaccine is available, Hoang expects that figure to rise to at least 80%.
“A lot of businesses will go cashless after this, and we’ll become a much more seamless economy that way,” Hoang predicts.
It is unlikely that cash is going to completely disappear anytime soon, but as businesses start to plan their way out of pandemic trading, the growing influence of cashless payments is already changing the day-to-day lives of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) owners.
Business-as-unusual in an increasingly cashless world
It’s still not entirely clear what the implications are, but the trend is clear.
In practice, paper money retreated from large parts of the economy ages ago. Businesses seldom clear invoices with wads of $100 notes, and the federal government doesn’t mail bills to small business owners applying for grant programs.
It’s at the retail level, where many SMEs trade, that physical cash has continued in regular use, although even here, uptake of card payment methods has risen rapidly.
This has been the case for some time, according to regular surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank, and as brick-and-mortar stores closed in favour of e-commerce transactions when Australia went into lockdown, the use of cash was curbed even further.
Some welcome the change. There are, after all, a range of benefits to ditching cash payments completely, even if it took something on the scale of a global pandemic to bring it on.
DJ, the owner of longstanding Melbourne Indian restaurant Gaylords, has stopped accepting cash in the wake of the pandemic.
“Taking cash puts all our customers and staff in danger … we just cannot take the chance,” the business owner tells Crikey.
“Most people were using the card system anyway and dealing with cash has always been a difficult challenge.”
DJ says he’s not sure whether cash payments will make a comeback at Gaylords once a vaccine is available, but he welcomes the cashless society with open arms.
“For small businesses a cashless society will be much easier, because you don’t have to deal with closing,” DJ says.
Likewise, Hoang does not reminisce about the decline of cash transactions, saying savings associated with digital payments outweigh the burden of merchant fees for Roll’d franchisees.
“You don’t have to handle cash, and that probably saves you an hour every day,” Hoang says.
I thought the great advantage that cash enjoys is in the black economy. Is that not why $100 notes are so popular?
Please say it is not so.
Went out to dinner last night – first sit down in 3 months!
Please pay by card – OK
That will be a 2.2% surcharge – Not OK
Just factor it into the price already!
Yes PM. I have been wanting to know for years now, if card payments save the retailer so much time, why are card surcharges applied?
I know this was covered by some august body, ASIC, APRA, Reserve Bank, can’t remember, where they looked at the fees banks charge retailers (usually way out of line with actual cost, and with a marginal cost approaching zero) but also whether they should be allowed to pass on those surcharges. They said yes, and took no account of the savings to retailers from card transactions.
Cash can’t disappear until there are fee-less anonymous debit cards (“No babe, I certainly haven’t gone to Maccas 5 days a week since you’ve been working from home”). And when homeless people get eftpos terminals.
Yes, anonymous cards necessary. I’ve been paying mostly by debit card but prefer the anonymity.
If an “anonymous” card is charged from a bank a/c there is a digital trail.
However, Office Works has a perfect template for such a card, used for printing within the store – obtained over the counter and charged with cash.
Similarly, when BankCard was finally killed off* (late 80s?) it was the loss of a perfect example of private money as the system was an in-house deal between banks… when there were more than the current Four Pillocks.
*The introduction of the card was foreplay to habituate a population averse to debt to see using plastic as the modern, cool future.
Once ingrained, the bait & switch to credit cards was eezy-peezy and the rest is history – look at private, non mortgage, debt in this country.
The future paperless office in a yet to happen digital economy was all the rage in the 70s. Then computer printers and automated photocopiers came along.
In the US a substantial percentage of the poor have no access to proper banking services and get ripped off cashing their pay cheques at dodgy stores. Cashless isn’t going to work there or for many of our poor here for some time yet.
Yeah, yeah. Heard it all before. Wait until we have a cyber attack on the financial system or significant power outage and then we will see the articles on cash making a comeback.
Just a beat up. As the Reserve Bank governor said – cash will most likely be a continuing niche form of payment.