Rising Digital Wallet Adoption

Australians are increasingly turning away from traditional banking and payment methods in favour of digital alternatives according to a new analysis from the Australian Banking Association (ABA).

The ABA’s analysis, which was based on a survey of over 2,000 people conducted by RFi Research throughout 2021, found that less than 20% of Australians now prefer to conduct their day-to-day banking in a branch. In fact, 72% of survey respondents admitted that they hadn’t visited a branch of their main bank at all during August.

Instead, the vast majority of Australians (over 80%) are electing to do everything from checking their bank account balances to transferring money either via online banking or a banking app.

Cash use is also on the decline. According to Reserve Bank research, cash accounted for 69% of retail payments in 2007 before dropping to just 27% by 2019. And this trend has been hastened further by the pandemic, with both cash use and ATM withdrawals having fallen even more.

“COVID-19 accelerated trends in our society and changed the way we live our lives,” said chief executive of the ABA, Anna Bligh.

“Working from home will forever be more prominent within the workforce, we have steered away from using cash and as a result are seeing an increase in card and technology payments and the existing trend of doing banking online instead of in a branch has only continued.”