Kiwis Backed a Cash Floor. Banks Got a Working Group

On 1 October 2026 the Reserve Bank of New Zealand published 6,106 responses to its cash-access plan, then sat down with banks on a voluntary basis. Nine in ten individual submitters said the country needs a cash services standard. The maps that would meet that standard can be filled with shared machines, not restaffed counters.

The consultation asked whether cash should stay close to home. The answer was yes. The product now on the table is a bank working group, and a design that lets lenders hit distance tests after a decade of closures.

Six Thousand Submissions, Then a Bank Working Group

Assistant Governor Karen Silk said more than 6,000 people filled in the questionnaire and about 4,000 wrote extra comments. Small business owners and market stallholders told the Bank that cash was a secure way to get paid, and that depositing notes, getting coins, and reaching a bank was getting harder and more costly.

New Zealanders use and value cash alongside digital ways to pay. More than 6000 people completed our questionnaire and about 4000 wrote to us or gave extra information and we appreciate all contributions. Small business owners and market stallholders told us that cash was a secure, reliable way to get paid but that depositing cash, getting coins, and accessing bank services was becoming harder and more costly.

Karen Silk, Assistant Governor Money, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, 1 October 2026

The Bank’s own findings from 6,106 submissions split 6,083 individuals from 23 organisations. Around half of the people who replied were unhappy with cash services in their district (48.5%) and across the country (53.87%). Support for having a standard did not split by city and farm: 90% agreed, and 76% strongly agreed.

Half of individual respondents said the proposed level of service in their district was about right. Another 29% said it was not enough, 17% did not know, and 2% said it delivered too many services. More than 70% thought the travel caps, 3 km in urban areas, 15 km one way in rural settlements, and 30 km in remote areas, were about right or still too far.

THE KEEPING CASH LOCAL CALENDAR

1. 25 February 2026: The Reserve Bank opens the Keeping Cash Local consultation on a cash services standard for banks.
2. 24 April 2026: It publishes a legal-basis paper and extends the deadline after more than 4,700 early responses.
3. 31 July 2026: Submissions close. The original six-week window had been due to end on 10 April.
4. 1 October 2026: Findings, 23 organisation submissions, and a Kantar workshop report are released. The Bank says it is now working with a bank working group on a voluntary approach.

Robbie, the Bank’s manager of money and cash policy, had put the political question in plain terms at the February launch of the cash-access plan: for years the Bank had asked Kiwis if they still wanted the option of using cash, and the answer had been a resounding, unambiguous yes. The 1 October dump is that yes, written down. It is not a finished rule.

What the Cash Services Standard Would Require

The proposal tested two floors: how far a person should have to travel for free cash services, and how many free sites each district should have. Cash services, in the Bank’s definition, means three jobs in one place: withdraw, deposit, and swap a $50 note for smaller notes and coins.

Banks could meet those floors with shared full-service sites, or with a much larger scatter of their own partial machines. The consultation paper set the density test at 2.5 multi-bank, full-service cash sites per 10,000 people, or the equivalent if banks refused to share. Geospatial work in that paper said the shared path pointed to 1,293 sites. Going it alone pointed to about 5,000.

THE FLOOR THE CONSULTATION TESTED

Those five hubs sit in Martinborough, Ōpōtiki, Twizel, Waimate and Whangamatā. Even there, only customers of ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Kiwibank, TSB and Westpac can use them. Everything else in the country is a partial site: a machine that spits out notes but will not take a deposit, will not break a $50, or will not serve another bank’s customer.

The $104 million figure is the Bank’s own conservative sum, not a bank invoice. It assumed $100,000 a year to turn a partial site into a shared full-service one, including a possible move inside the district, and the same $100,000 as a saving if a surplus ATM is switched off.

Shared Hubs Can Meet the Maps Without New Branches

This is the part the public consultation did not put on the survey form, and it is the part that will decide what “close to home” looks like. The Bank told submitters that banks could choose how to deliver the outcome. Shared hubs, cash depots, and staffed branches all count if they do the three jobs. A town can therefore tick the box with a machine in a council building, and still have no one behind a counter.

Ian Woolford, the Bank’s director of money and cash, had already said providing and handling cash should be a basic banking service, free of charge, because cash is part of a customer’s relationship with their bank. He also said about 40% of bank branches had closed over the past decade. A January 2026 briefing to the Minister of Finance put the ATM cut beside that number: bank-owned machines down 32% over the same span.

Roger Beaumont, chief executive of the New Zealand Banking Association, called the February proposal extreme and a back to the future solution. He said demanding the provision of 3,000 more branches and ATMs, the go-it-alone end of the Bank’s range, would raise the cost of banking for everyone, and that member banks had already stopped regional branch closures for almost six years. He also said around 1.5% of all customer transactions are made at an ATM, and that share is slowly falling.

Those two stories can both be true. The closures already happened. A pause on further regional exits does not put a teller back in Ruatoria or a deposit slot in Te Araroa. The 1,293-site map is how a “yes” to cash can be met while the human branch network stays the size it is.

A 12-month community cash trial in Waipukurau, run with Central Hawke’s Bay District Council, is the depot version of that idea. Approved local businesses and community groups can get cash and make change in low-denomination notes, free of fees. The Bank said an interim Litmus report showed people were using the depot, with strong uptake of its deposit service. Until that trial, people and firms in Waipukurau and Waipawa had been travelling up to 50 km to Hastings, Havelock North and Dannevirke.

Three Banks Backed Cash Access and Rejected the Design

Only three banks filed identifiable submissions: SBS, Kiwibank and ANZ. All three said they support the public still being able to get cash. All three had significant concerns about the detailed proposal, said it would lift their costs or that the cost work was incomplete, and favoured a voluntary path in collaboration with the Reserve Bank. ANZ added that genuine access is more than travel distance and queue times.

On 15 July 2026, before the consultation even closed, Beaumont said the association no longer needed to file a formal submission because the Bank had moved away from the mandatory cash access standard. That is the process win. The public was still being asked, through July, whether New Zealand needs a standard banks would have to meet.

WHERE THE 23 ORGANISATIONS LANDED

• Retail and civic groups: Retail NZ’s own survey backed a cash services standard. Nine civic and membership bodies, Public Trust, and Rangitīkei District Council also wanted a minimum accessibility rule, including for fundraising.
• Cash-industry firms: Armourguard Logistics, Glory Global Solutions and Banzpay Technology supported a standard. Next Payments supported it with caveats. These are the firms that move bulk notes, run independent ATMs, or carry the messages that make a cash machine work.
• The three banks: SBS, Kiwibank and ANZ backed continued access, rejected or heavily qualified the detailed floor, and wanted a voluntary industry deal.
• Digital payments firms: Paymark preferred investment in digital services only. Revolut warned of adverse impacts on digital-only banks that never ran a cash counter.
• The New Zealand Initiative: Cash-access problems are real, it said, but a mandatory footprint of this scale is a tax-like duty that should sit on the taxpayer, not on banks, and the Bank lacked the instrument it was describing.

Kantar workshops in Invercargill, Hokitika, Wairoa, Auckland and Kaikohe lined up with the survey. A proposed standard was popular. People who rarely used cash still said it mattered, and they wanted a say in where the sites go. Seasonal towns asked for more than a population formula, because tourist surges and freight routes are not the same as a census night count.

The firms that make money moving cash want a floor. The banks that closed the counters want a conversation. The digital-only lenders want to stay out of a grid they never built. That split, not the 90% headline, is what the working group has to stitch together.

The Bank Asked for a Power Parliament Did Not Give

Dr Eric Crampton, chief economist at the New Zealand Initiative, told the consultation the launch papers had described a standard banks must provide, grounded in social licence. Two months later the legal-basis paper said the current preferred option was a voluntary standard, with statutory options only if a voluntary deal could not be put in place.

At launch, the Bank had no presently exercisable power to impose the standard on which it consulted. Its earlier internal advice said compulsory delivery would require legislation.

Dr Eric Crampton, chief economist, The New Zealand Initiative, 31 July 2026 submission

Crampton’s no power to impose the standard argument rests on the Bank’s own paper trail. In July 2025 Silk recorded that the Bank’s real desire was that banks be required to deliver cash services, which would require legislation. In January 2026 the Bank told the Minister of Finance it had limited immediate powers and that new primary legislation would be the most direct way to require banks to keep providing cash. It had asked for an express cash-access power in 2019. Parliament, in two later overhauls of the Bank’s legislation, did not grant it.

The Deposit Takers Act route the Bank later floated still needs regulations made by the Governor-General on the minister’s recommendation, after a Cabinet decision. Only then could the Bank issue a standard. Crampton’s charge is that the public was invited to score a mandatory outcome while the Bank was already seeking voluntary commitments under the shadow of a rule it could not yet write.

Silk’s line after the findings was consistent with that April paper. The Reserve Bank, she said, is working with New Zealand’s banks on a voluntary approach that will see them improve access to cash. She has also said there is a case for banks bearing a reasonable cost, because they benefit from customers placing money with them. The working group is where that “reasonable” gets a number, and where Revolut’s objection, that a cash duty on digital-only banks is a different animal from a duty on ANZ, will be tested.

Rural Deposits and the Cash People Keep at Home

The 2025 Cash Use Survey, published with the consultation findings, is the other half of the 1 October dump. It is a representative sample, not a self-selected inbox, and it does not show a country that has finished with notes.

WHAT THE 2025 CASH USE SURVEY FOUND

• Everyday use: 56.6% of adults used cash for everyday things in 2025, near the 2023 and 2021 readings, down from 95.8% in 2019.
• Who still pays that way: 65.5% of rural residents and 53.6% of urban residents; 63.7% of Māori respondents and 55.2% of non-Māori; 62.5% of people aged 60 to 74.
• Never: 5.1% said they never use cash, down from 11.8% in 2023. In the past week, 38.7% had not used it at all, up from 30.9% in 2023.
• Stored at home: 69.5% keep cash somewhere other than a bank, up from 32.8% in 2019, mostly for emergencies and quick access.

People are using cash less often in a normal week and holding more of it in a drawer. That pattern fits a backup, not a hobby. 19.5% had been unable to pay with cash in the past three months because a shop would not take it. 53.7% were somewhat or very concerned about fewer people using cash. 9.9% said they would not cope if they could not get or use it; 45.1% said it might be difficult in some situations. Rural residents were more likely to feel very concerned (27.7%) than urban residents (17.2%).

Getting notes out is still mostly easy. 77.2% found withdrawing cash very or somewhat easy, and 87.6% used ATMs, still the main channel. The hole is putting notes back. 8.0% found it hard to deposit because there was no deposit-taking ATM nearby. 10.9% found it hard because there was no branch. Rural respondents were more likely to call withdrawal somewhat difficult (8.8%) or very difficult (1.7%). Mobile contactless payments for everyday things rose to 28.8% from 14.7% in 2019, which is the other side of the same decade.

The loudest public argument about this plan, outside the official inbox, has treated the cash floor as a hedge against a future in which cards, apps and a digital identity sit between a person and their money. The survey already shows that hedge in the numbers: more cash in the house, more worry about a cashless shop, and a stubborn rural and older share still paying with notes. A shared depot that takes a market stall’s takings does more for that group than a withdraw-only ATM on a highway.

The working group now has 6,106 submissions, a 1,293-site map, and a $104 million rule-of-thumb bill. It does not have a statute, a list of which banks are in, or a date when a town without a deposit slot gets one.