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Private credit structures can be very opaque. But high returns have been attracting investors all year.

Why anxious Australians are putting cash back in their wallets

After more than two decades of ditching cash, Australians have started putting $20 and $50 notes back in their wallets.

  • Shane Wright

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The PayPay app icon on a smartphone in Tokyo,

Australians hate surcharges. So why don’t we move to QR codes?

It’s a payment method that has taken off in cash-loving Japan. But here’s why Australians will still pay more to use card.

  • Millie Muroi
Expresso co-owner Jessica Kotzen, receives payment from customer Amber Boardman at her cafe in Brookvale, Sydney.

Businesses warn of price rises from RBA’s surcharge ban

The ban is expected to save Australian consumers $1.6 billion a year in unnecessary fees, but will likely cause a dramatic cutback in the generosity of card points schemes.

  • Elias Visontay
Business groups are warning that grocery prices are set to rise in the weeks ahead.

Cost crisis: Where your budget is about to be squeezed even harder

Some of the rising costs are obvious – like housing – but others are harder to spot, and could risk putting the country in recession by the end of the year.

  • Nina Hendy
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My love letter to ye olde postie … Will he mind if I email it?

Letter writers and coin collectors of the world unite! Our analogue days are numbered.

  • Jo Pybus
The dollar could be hammered down to single-digit exchange rates in a 'hot' conflict with China.

Subsidies, sweeteners and price hikes: What changes on January 1

Long-promised changes in force in the new year include protections for cash, passport price hikes, and the arrival of Australia’s first Centre for Disease Control.

  • Brittany Busch
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Cash was temporarily banned on south-east Queensland public transport during the pandemic, and then permanently banned.

Cash was ‘temporarily’ banned on Brisbane buses and trains. It never came back

The Australian government plans to force businesses to accept cash for essential services. Should public transport be included?

  • Felicity Caldwell

I’ve changed my mind about red tape, but cutting it won’t solve everything

Streamlining regulation won’t be easily or quickly achieved, certainly not in a three-day roundtable.

  • Ross Gittins
Bank branches can dodge the fate of video rental stores, the banking industry’s peak body says.

How bank branches can avoid the fate of video stores

Bank branches won’t disappear, but what happens in them will be very different in five to 10 years, says the Banking Association’s outgoing boss Anna Bligh.

  • Clancy Yeates
Liam Walsh and Rosalina Prasetio currently rent a townhouse in Frankston, but want the security of home ownership to start a family.

Victorians react to the 2025 state budget

We asked six different Victorians what they thought of this year’s state budget. This is what they said.

  • Lachlan Abbott, Henrietta Cook, Madeleine Heffernan, Noel Towell, Tom Cowie and Nicole Precel