Travelex provided AFR Weekend with access to its cash vault amid intense security providing rare insight into logistics and operations abandoned by major banks.
I’m standing in a highly secured vault, in an unmarked office in a large business park in the Sydney metropolitan area.
The extensive security is necessary due to the special and highly desirable nature of Travelex’s product: bank notes. Indonesian rupiah are sought by Australians going to Bali. Travelex sells around $2 million worth a week.Travelex sells around this amount of rupiah notes to Australians every week, through its branches and other distributors, like Australia Post or Helloworld travel agents.
To hedge this risk, Travelex runs a treasury operation in Sydney’s CBD. Its desk offsets the piles of cash here with digital money in commercial bank accounts.Money comes in trucks run by “cash in transit” companies. Upon arrival, it is put through a special counterfeiting and counting machine, worth $750,000.visit to the secret operations provides a rare insight into the cash economy, and the complex logistics of moving money around.
The two biggest “cash in transit” companies, Armaguard and Prosegur, are seeking ACCC approval to merge.But cash remains popular with travellers, for several reasons. Travelex estimates between $6 billion and $12 billion in foreign cash is spent by Australians abroad each year.Travelex estimates between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of spending by international holiday-makers is done in cash. According to Statistica, Australian residents travelling abroad spent about $65 billion on overseas trips in the year ending March 2020. This would put pre-pandemic spending of cash abroad at around $6 billion to $12 billion.
The orderly restructuring also removed a former majority shareholder, Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, who was caught up in an accounting scandal in 2020. The current business has no connections to the former owners after its assets were taken over that year by a new entity.