Latest / Best of Business / Ian Woolford: Reserve Bank Money and Cash Director on the RBNZ trialling a community cash depot project

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Ian Woolford: Reserve Bank Money and Cash Director on the RBNZ trialling a community cash depot project · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Now, the Reserve Bank is a little bit worried that
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  Speaker 2: we might start finding it a little hard to find cash,
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  Speaker 2: you know, with the old ATMs disappearing in the banks
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  Speaker 2: pulling out of rural areas. So it's got a plan.
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  Speaker 2: It's opened a cash depot for people in why pokaoh
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  Speaker 2: just to see how it goes. It's part of a
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  Speaker 2: twelve month trial. Up to now, these people had to
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  Speaker 2: drive fifty k's just to withdraw cash. Ian Woolford is
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  Speaker 2: the Reserve Bank's Director of Money and Cash and with
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  Speaker 2: us now Hi Ian hi, okay. So this cash depot,
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  Speaker 2: how does it work? Is it basically you guys running
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  Speaker 2: your own minibank.
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  Speaker 3: Sort of, although it's really just about the cash. We're
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  Speaker 3: not giving out loans or anything like that. But what
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  Speaker 3: it does is it lets retailers come in and they'll
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  Speaker 3: be able to deposit money they can make change. This
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  Speaker 3: is one of the issues that retailers have rights banks
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  Speaker 3: withdrawal from rural areas, actually having the float, being able
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  Speaker 3: to the money, all those sorts of things. So we're
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  Speaker 3: trying to find solutions for that to make it easier
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  Speaker 3: for retailers.
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  Speaker 2: Right, but what about the average punter because this is
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  Speaker 2: only this is only for businesses and boards of trustees
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  Speaker 2: at schools and so on and so forth. What about
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  Speaker 2: if you just have a punter who wants to withdraw
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  Speaker 2: I don't know, three hundred dollars.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, So at the moment, we focus on retailers, and
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  Speaker 3: I'll tell you why. It's because it's quite surprising about
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  Speaker 3: a third of where people get their money from is
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  Speaker 3: actually from a retailer and cash out. But what's happening
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  Speaker 3: people might be noticing retailers are increasingly saying, well, we
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  Speaker 3: don't really want it set cash because it's getting too
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  Speaker 3: expensive for us to handle, and it's just a bit
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  Speaker 3: too difficult because the ATMs and the branches are disappearing.
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  Speaker 3: So what we're trialing is if we make it easier
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  Speaker 3: for retailers to get changed so they can deposit, they
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  Speaker 3: can get the float, et cetera. And this isn't quite
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  Speaker 3: live yet, but it's about to go live. It's part
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  Speaker 3: of the trial, and we actually reimburse the retailer for
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  Speaker 3: giving some cash out. Does that actually change people's behaviors,
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  Speaker 3: so that helps ungum the system. You know you can.
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  Speaker 3: You've still got the choice of using cash when you
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  Speaker 3: want to, so at the moment it's just the retailer
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  Speaker 3: cash depot. But in the future, you know, we're exploring
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  Speaker 3: all options.
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  Speaker 2: Interesting. Ian, thanks very much for talking us through it.
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  Speaker 2: Ian Wilford, Reserve Bank, Director of Money in Cash.
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