Cashless Catastrophe: ANZ Outage Highlights Payment System Vulnerability

The vulnerability of relying on cashless payment methods has yet again been demonstrated with a global outage of ANZ’s payment system. The outage lasted for over 8 hours, and media reports claim that numerous customers had to stop their purchases because they were unable to complete their payments. This incident underscores the importance of building resilience in the payment network. The most important element is ensuring that cash, the most secure and reliable payment method, remains available and universally accepted.

Separately, we have also seen increasing attention to the consequences of the move towards a cashless society. ABC News has reported on the move towards a cashless society and the hidden costs to vulnerable people, including the elderly. We particularly want to re-iterate the comments of National Seniors Australia CEO Chris Grice: "Any society can embrace change, but you've always got to bring everybody with you, and the concern is we're leaving a cohort behind by racing towards this digital economy," To read more click here.

ATMIA believes that in a digital age, it's crucial for cash and electronic payments to coexist to optimise convenience and choice for all consumers and businesses in their daily transaction cycles.

Moving on, I am pleased to announce that Matt Sykes will chair the Strategic Direction Committee forum in 2024. Some of the industry issues that will be addressed at this forum include:

• Senate Inquiry to Bank Closures in Regional Australia – due to release in May 2024.
• Treasury review of Australia’s Payment System – ATMIA will monitor developments in this space.
• The NSW Cashless Poker Machines is scheduled to start in 2024. It is expected to report to the NSW Government in November 2024.
• Hear more from National Seniors Australia CEO Chris Grice. Guest speaker.

In 2024, we invite all members to express their concerns or raise any industry issues that they would like to be discussed in this forum. We welcome any suggestions and assure you that they will be handled confidentially. The details of the upcoming Strategic Direction Committee meeting will be shared with our members by the end of this month.

To our friends in SE Asia, we invite members and non-members to our upcoming webinar on ATMs in Asia- Thriving in an Evolving Security Environment.

To be held on 19^th March, at 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Asia/Kuala Lumpur)

This is a free webinar. To reserve your spot, click here.

Please refer to the promo below for this webinar. A special discounted ATMIA & ASA membership package will be available to all newly registered attendees.  

On behalf of the ATMIA team, thank you for your ongoing support.

Cheers,
Sandra