Cash is not king

In the past few years Israel has been moving more towards a cashless society in its efforts to make it more difficult for criminals to function, and to prevent money laundering. The entire Western world is moving in that direction, and Israel has been going with it. A couple of years ago Israel passed a law to limit the size of business transactions allowed to be conducted with cash. Israel wants to be able to keep track of the flow of money, which it cannot do with cash.

To that end, there is a law proposal being formulated by representatives of the Finance Ministry to limit private cash holdings to a maximum of 200,000nis.

Until now there was no limit on how much cash you could keep at home. Just how much you could spend at any one time. Now they will limit how much cash you can have - if the proposal passes into law. People will be allowed to hold 50,000nis in cash but will have to report such amounts to the authorities, but once they hit the 200k mark they will have to turn it into the bank or risk confiscation.

According to the report, as reported in Hamechadesh, the Justice Ministry is opposed to this law due to complications with the Arab population that seems to function largely on cash holdings. They arent protecting the Arab population because of this but need to prepare it in advance with some additional steps, including broadening the level of credit available in the Arab community and giving them a window of sorts in which to deposit their cash into bank accounts. 

Cash is not king. No longer. 

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