The Commonwealth Treasury has released the final Industry Codes Cash Acceptance Regulations which requires supermarkets and fuel retailers to honour cash transactions up to $500.
While acknowledging that cash transactions are an accepted and integral part of the business of a fuel retailer, ACAPMA expressed its reservations about a blanket across the board cash mandate without recognising the different operating models and conditions within the sector.
ACAPMA played a very active role throughout the consultation process highlighting the challenges of fuel retailers around security and staff safety, the impact on the operators of unstaffed fuel sites, and the lack of banking services in rural and regional areas.
While not a perfect outcome, Treasury is to be commended for listening to the retail fuel industry and making some amendments to their original proposals.
The most important components of the regulations are that the cash mandate will not apply from 9pm to 7am each day. The importance of this is that fuel retailers are less likely to be potential targets for robberies when staffing levels are low.
Secondly, fuel retailers will be exempt if they have a turnover of less than $10 million, however will not be exempt if they represent or trade on behalf of a business that does have a turnover of more than $10 million. That is, franchisees, commission agents and dealer operators which operate under a large fuel brand will be required to abide by the cash mandate.
A welcome change from the original Treasury proposal is that unstaffed sites that mostly sell diesel will be exempt from the cash mandate.
Fuel sites that are unstaffed and largely sell unleaded fuel will be required to apply to the ACCC for an exemption from the mandate.
The ACCC may also grant an exemption for retailers if it is satisfied that exceptional circumstances outside the retailers’ control prevent those retailers from accepting cash payments, such as during times of natural disasters.
The regulations come into effect from 1 January 2026 and will be reviewed in three years’ time.
ACAPMA
