Australia: RBA Survey Finds Fewer Than 1% of Aussies Used Crypto for Payment in 2019

According to a recent report by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), fewer than 1 percent of Australians paid for consumer goods with digital currencies. This, according to a report by Coindesk, March 20, 2020.

Crypto Usage Among Aussies Still Lukewarm

While cryptocurrencies have existed for more than a decade, their usage among the masses continues to remain lukewarm as according to a recent report by the RBA – Australia’s lender of last resort – less than 1 percent of Aussies used digital currencies to pay for consumer goods for the entirety of 2019.

Notably, the RBA drew this conclusion after surveying close to 1,100 respondents. A key conclusion drawn from the survey is that despite consumers choosing to embrace digital and alternative payment methods over cash, their inclination toward using crypto as a medium of payment remains largely mum. The central bank had conducted the survey in October and November 2019.

Interestingly, this low usage of cryptocurrencies for consumer goods comes despite the fact that more than 80 percent of Australians are aware of the potential of cryptocurrencies for being used for paying for goods. These respondents said that they’d heard of crypto, thus making it the third-most recognized “alternative payment method” that the bank surveyed for. Crypto ranked just behind the “buy now pay later” services and “tap and go” mobile payments.

Unfortunately for cryptocurrencies, they failed to surpass even private payment gateways including AliPay and WeChat Pay which ranked ahead of it in terms of mass usage. Digital currencies had the worst usage-to-awareness ratio by far, the survey suggests.

The RBA said:

“Although many respondents had heard of ‘cryptocurrencies’, very few had used a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin to actually make a consumer payment over the past year.”

While the survey paints an overall grim picture regarding cryptocurrencies, it was also the first survey conducted by the RBA that asked respondents about cryptocurrency.

Australia Remains Unsold on Crypto

Despite the global surge in the popularity of crypto in recent times, the island nation doesn’t exactly seem to be sold on the potential of cryptocurrencies. Early this year, in January, BTCManager reported how Facebook’s controversial Libra digital currency was not welcomed by the RBA in Australia.