A customer has voiced fears of a cashless world while documenting the lack of self-service registers that accept cash in his local Coles supermarket.
Only two out of nine self-service machines at the supermarket accepted cash, he explained, a ratio that has been slammed as discrimination by the pro-cash movement.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Coles customer slams lack of self-service machines accepting cash.
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Sydney DJ and producer Tom Budin documented the self-service registers at the Sydney supermarket in a TikTok video on Monday “to prove a point”.
“Only two machines left that accept cash and, mark my words … these machines, in my opinion, will be gone by the end of the year.
“What a world we live in.”
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It’s understood Coles has no current plans to phase out cash entirely, and it declined to comment when contacted by 7NEWS.com.au.
Previous 7NEWS.com.au reports in Queensland found three Coles local stores in the state do not accept cash at self-serve registers.
However, at these stores there are other checkout lanes — registers with conveyor belts — that do accept cash payments.
A Sydney customer has slammed his local Coles supermarket for having just two of self-service registers accept cash. Credit: TikTok/AAP Images
Pro-cash organisation Cash Welcome co-ordinator Jason Bryce argued customers are no longer offered the same level of service if they wish to pay cash at Coles.
“If you’re paying with cash, you have to wait longer for the increasingly limited numbers of terminals that accept cash,” he told 7NEWS.com.au.
“People paying with a card or phone get skipped to the front of the line. Supermarkets are discriminating against people who rely on cash.
“Especially for food and groceries, we must be able to choose how we pay. Australians need our government to step in, like the UK, France and parts of the USA have done, and protect our right to choose how we pay.
“Coles can’t guarantee their EFTPOS system is always up and running. As soon as an outage hits, they can only accept cash, like what happened at Woolworths last month.”
But some people questioned claims by the wider pro-cash movement, in comments on Budin’s post.
“Are Coles pushing an agenda or are they catering to how the majority of customers already pay?” one person wrote
“(It) just makes so much more sense putting cash in two machines (rather) than all of them. It takes so much time to fill and count tills and you have to do it multiple times a day … having (cash available) on two registers makes everyone’s job easier,” another wrote.
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