Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer says cashless society is just round the corner

Plenty of intriguing insights about fintech were delivered at The Australian Financial Review’s Banking & Wealth Summit last week. So, here’s a selection of highlights, in no particular order.

Brian Hartzer says cash is disappearing from the economy “faster than any of us anticipated”. A recent trip to Copenhagen by the Westpac chief revealed the decline of cash in Denmark is being driven by customers.

Danske Bank’s MobilePay is being used by more than 80 per cent of Danes to pay each other, after five years in the market. Hartzer reckons 95 per cent of Westpac transactions will be online or mobile within a decade.

Other Westpac bankers are also turning Nordic for inspiration. Business bank boss David Lindberg told the Summit about Swish, the now-ubiquitous mobile payment service owned by the big banks of Sweden – where less than 1 per cent of transactions are made with cash.

“I think we are closer to a cashless society than many people would imagine,” Lindberg said. Visa’s head of Australia, Julian Potter, told the event the use of cash by small business will decline sharply once the costs of moving and handling it are made clear.

NPP heralds cash decline

The birth of the New Payments Platform (NPP) will accelerate the decline of cash in Australia and herald a new era of e-invoicing to streamline business account keeping. Australian Banking Association boss Anna Bligh described the NPP as the most significant investment made by banks in the past decade.

Leila Fourie, chief executive of the Australian Payments Network, said the NPP had been working closely with start-ups to develop overlay services for the new Reserve Bank-sponsored infrastructure.

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Source: Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer says cashless society is just round the corner | afr.com