👉 Background: Australia has two main ‘cash in transit’ companies. Those are the armoured vans that zip around taking cash to and from businesses and ATMs. The two big players are Armaguard and Prosegur.

👉 What happened: Until recently, these two have had more tension than Harry Styles and Chris Pine. Armaguard serves Coles, Prosegur serves Woolies etc. Now that’s all changing. These two big players want to merge!

👉 What else: Together these two would hold about 90% of the cash in transit market so they’ll need to convince the ACCC that this deal is compatible with the ‘public interest’.

What's the key learning?

💡Cash is in decline, but it still has an important role to play in Australian society. Get this: the RBA says that in 2007, 69% of all payments were made in cash... But by 2019, that number had fallen to just 27%.

💡As the amount of cash moving around shrinks, the moving of money becomes more costly. But the RBA is hell-bent on making sure cash remains easily accessible… especially because elderly people who don’t love online banking use cash the most.

💡But it’s not just older people who favour cash. Some people like it because it’s more private, and people run to ATMs when disaster strikes (the ol' cash under matrress).

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