Crime or hoarding: Where are Australia's missing banknotes? | The Business | ABC NEWS

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) prints billions of dollars worth of banknotes every year - printing $2 billion worth of $100 notes. But $100 notes are a rare sight in the tap-and-go economy. So where are they? ABC's Story Lab reporter Julian Fell has been investigating this. He says of all the transactions in Australia, cash is used in about one in five of them. The RBA has done some research into where Australia's cash goes. It estimates between 9 and 14 per cent of Australia's cash is used in legitimate transactions, around 5 to 9 per cent is either lost or destroyed. Then money is hoarded either here or overseas, and or ends up in the shadow economy. "So if you look at those numbers and you go and add them all up, you'll realize that doesn't actually come to 100 per cent," Mr Fell says. "That's only accounting for about 70% of Australia's cash." He says even after accounting for lost, stolen or destroyed notes, criminal activity, and hoarding - both domestically and internationally - around $32 billion worth of bank notes are still unaccounted for. He says there are calls for the higher denomination notes to be phased out, to make money laundering and smuggling more difficult and expensive.
#ABCBusiness
Subscribe: http://ab.co/1svxLVE
Read more here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-06/banknote-printing-hoarding-mystery/106808970

Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated.

#ABCNEWS #ABCNEWSAustralia