The Australian currency has a lot of coins. Similar as the Euro there are 2$, 1$, 50Cent, 20Cent, 10Cent, 5Cent coins. A funny thing is that prices are displayed in 1Cent steps, e.g. $9,99, but there are no smaller coins than 5Cent coins.
Therefore you pay the rounded sum if you pay cash, i.e. 10$, but if you pay with your bank card, the actual $9.99 are deducted from your bank account.

The coins are quite heavy, therefore we began to collect them in a jar. We are now already rather careful with our assumptions that things work in Australia the same way than in Austria. Therefore we went first to the bank in order to ask how to deal with a lot of coins in Australian banks. And that was good so.

In the last few years there have been no longer banks without automated coin counter machines in Vienna. Nearly every branch has one. In Perth this is not the case, no bank has one of this counter machines. Instead you get small plastic bags in which you have to fill in a certain number of coins with the same denomination. Then you go to the bank where these bags are weighed up on a hand scale by the bank employee.

All this is a rather tedious procedure. Firstly you need quite some time, because it takes time to fill the coins into the plastic bags, then it needs even more time until the coins are weighed up at the bank. But perhaps they don’t have these coins counter machines in order to keep more people employed. I am just glad that I’m no retailer who has to bring daily its coins to the bank.