People to ditch debit cards this week in favour of only using coins or notes
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: Pexels
Plenty of Australians are ditching the debit cards and going back to cash this week in protest against fees and charges involved with people being able to spend their own money.
From 3 July until 10 July the campaign for 'cash only week' is urging people to make as few purchases with their card as they can, and ideally none if they can help it.
When you think about it a person could go quite a long time without spending any cash at all.
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Tap your card to pay for this, insert it into the reader to pay for that, put your card on your phone and just pay like that if you like, the ways to get around coins and notes are growing as technology advances.
Only there's sometimes difficulties in getting your hands on your money, or otherwise extra charges thrown into the mix which make the whole thing a bit frustrating.
Organised on social media, this protest is urging people to 'benefit us plebs of society' and send a message to the big banks that they won't tolerate being pushed around.
What exactly is the problem Aussies have got with the banks? According to 9News as society becomes increasingly cashless, complaints about credit card charges have risen.
Weighing up the pros and cons for a cashless society flags up some issues which people don't always consider as cash becomes less and less used.
While going cashless is more convenient for many and helps cut down on crime, there are plenty who would be left behind that are not quite as adept at tapping and swiping their cards for every transaction.
Plus there are the concerns that if cashless is the only game in town then people will be at the mercy of whatever charges banks place on them accessing their money.
A woman in Australia recently decided to close down her bank account after she was told that she couldn't access her money.
She explained that she needed to take out 'three and a half thousand dollars cash' to pay someone doing renovations on her home and went down to her local bank branch to get the money.
However, when she got there she was told that the bank didn't actually have any money on site anymore, with the teller telling her she could only get it from their cash machine.
They gave her a temporary card to access her money but after that ran into technical difficulties she decided to withdraw her business from the bank altogether.
In her eyes it was her money and she could prove to the bank that it was her account, so she should be able to access her own funds if she wanted.