Walk into a big supermarket or petrol station in Australia today and you have a right that New Zealanders do not. Since the start of 2026, those businesses must take your cash. Here, a shop can still wave your notes away and tell you to tap a card instead. As cash quietly disappears from everyday life, the question is whether New Zealand should follow Australia and protect the right to pay with it.
What Australia has done
From 1 January 2026, Australia’s cash acceptance codes require large grocery and fuel retailers to accept cash for in-person purchases of 500 Australian dollars or less, between 7am and 9pm. In practice that captures the chains most people use for the essentials, from the big supermarkets to the major service stations.
The rule is deliberately narrow. It covers groceries and fuel rather than all shops, and small businesses with annual turnover under 10 million Australian dollars are exempt unless they trade under a big retailer’s brand. The competition regulator, the ACCC, oversees it, and while the first half of 2026 is a transition period, fines of up to around 198,000 Australian dollars can apply from July. The government has promised to review the scheme after three years.
Why Australia acted
The trigger was a scare over how cash physically moves around the country. Armaguard, the company that carries most of Australia’s cash, came close to collapse and needed bailouts from the banks and big retailers to keep trucks on the road. At the same time bank branches and ATMs have been closing fast, making it harder for people to get hold of notes and coins in the first place.
Cash use has not vanished, though. Australia’s central bank found cash still made up about 15 percent of payments by number in 2025, with roughly half the population using it in a typical week. The government’s argument is that as long as a sizeable group relies on cash, they should not be locked out of buying food and fuel. Australia is also winding up the cheque, with banks to stop issuing cheques by mid 2028 and stop accepting them by late 2029.
The rules in New Zealand
New Zealand banknotes and coins are legal tender, but that is widely misunderstood. Legal tender does not force a business to take your cash for an ordinary purchase. A shop is free to go card only or contactless only, as long as it makes that clear before you pay, usually with a sign or a word at the counter. There is no general law requiring a business to accept cash.
That leaves cash users exposed to the same squeeze as in Australia. Cash now features in well under 10 percent of transactions here, and around 40 percent of bank branches have closed over the past decade. Reserve Bank figures from 2025 suggest about 8 percent of people still rely on cash, while more than 80 percent use it at least sometimes.
What the Reserve Bank is doing
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is in the middle of a major piece of work on cash, but it is worth being clear about what it covers. Its Keeping Cash Local consultation, which opened in February 2026 and runs until the end of July, is about making sure banks provide cash services so people can withdraw and deposit notes locally. It targets the banks, not the shops, and would not on its own require a single retailer to accept cash.
The proposed standard would cost banks an estimated 104 million dollars a year, and they have pushed back hard, with the New Zealand Banking Association calling it extreme. On the separate question of forcing shops to take cash, the Reserve Bank has said only that it is researching the idea. There is no New Zealand mandate on the table, and the bank has run small community cash trials, starting in Waipukurau, to test ways of keeping cash flowing in towns that banks have left.
The case against cash
Cash has a darker side, and it is the flip side of the very thing that makes it useful. Because notes and coins leave no electronic trail, they are also the currency of the work that never gets recorded. Inland Revenue research has found that around a quarter of New Zealanders had taken part in cash jobs, the under the table payments that dodge GST and income tax, and the hidden economy is thought to cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax each year.
The same anonymity suits serious crime. The Government estimates about 1.3 billion dollars is laundered through New Zealand every year, much of it the proceeds of the drug trade, which is why thousands of businesses now have to run anti money laundering checks. Cash also oils the trade in stolen goods, where a fast sale at a market or online can turn a burglary into untraceable money. That is why second hand dealers and pawnbrokers, the great majority of them perfectly legitimate, are required by law to record who they buy from and to report anything that looks stolen. For critics, keeping cash alive means keeping that shadow economy alive too.
Not all of the cash economy is criminal, either. Plenty of lawful businesses simply prefer cash, and some are built on the discretion it offers. Sex work has been legal in New Zealand since 2003, and strip clubs and similar venues operate as legitimate businesses, yet they remain heavily cash based for reasons that cut both ways. A customer may want to pay in a way that never shows up on a bank statement, while on the other side of the transaction some of that income is never declared to Inland Revenue. It is the same quality at work every time, the fact that cash leaves no trace, prized by the law abiding and the law breaking alike.
The case for protecting cash
Set against those concerns, the people who lean on cash are not a small or random group. They are disproportionately older, rural, on low incomes or without a bank account, and for many of them cash is how they budget and stay in control of their money. Take cash acceptance away and those are the people left stranded at the till.
There is also a resilience argument that New Zealand has learned the hard way. When Cyclone Gabrielle knocked out power and the internet across Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti in 2023, card machines and ATMs went dark and cash was the only thing that worked, with emergency officials advising people to carry it. The Reserve Bank later concluded the cyclone had highlighted how much resilience the cash system had lost. Ian Woolford, the Reserve Bank’s director of money and cash, put it bluntly when asked whether cash might die out, telling the New Zealand Herald in 2024, “Well, not if we’ve got anything to do with it.” He added, “One of the lessons out of Cyclone Gabrielle is just how much resilience the system has lost as banks’ footprint has reduced.”
Could New Zealand follow Australia
There is already a proposal in Parliament. A New Zealand First member’s bill lodged in 2025 would require businesses to accept cash for purchases up to 500 dollars, with fines for those that refuse. For now it is stuck in the ballot of members’ bills, meaning it has not been drawn and may never become law. Retail New Zealand has dismissed it as a sledgehammer for a small problem.
So the two countries have split. Australia has legislated a narrow guarantee that is live right now, while New Zealand is still researching whether to go anywhere near a shop mandate, and is focused instead on keeping bank cash services alive. It is not the only Australian consumer idea New Zealand is weighing up either, with the country already adopting Australia’s approach to letting you share your own power and banking data to find a better deal.
Common questions
Do shops have to accept cash in New Zealand
No. Cash is legal tender, but businesses are not required to accept it for an ordinary purchase. A shop can choose to be card only as long as it tells you before you pay.
Is New Zealand getting rid of cash
No. The Reserve Bank has been clear it wants cash to remain available, and its current work is aimed at making sure banks keep providing cash services rather than phasing notes and coins out.
When did Australia’s cash rule start
The codes took effect on 1 January 2026, covering large grocery and fuel retailers for in-person purchases of 500 Australian dollars or less. Penalties for non-compliance can apply from July 2026.
Have you been caught out by a shop that would not take your cash, or do you think going card only is fair enough? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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