Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

The cashless debit card works at all shops that have an EFTPOS facility, both physical ones and those online. So the technological advances that have been undertaken under the working group have been around things like product-level blocking. For instance, when the product-level blocking technology is rolled out—we're currently trialling it in a number of places around in Australia, and you'll be very pleased to know that it's working particularly well—it will mean that if someone using the card went into what we would refer to as a 'mixed' merchant, being somebody who sells prohibited products as well as all the other products, they would still be able to use their card at the terminal because the terminal and the technology that exists would differentiate between a product that is allowable and a product that isn't allowable.

Another technological advance is tap and pay. Many people—I admit not all people, but many—have mobile phones. They'd be able to have the technology embedded into their phones so that they could tap and pay, and wouldn't actually have to carry the card. One of the most important technological advances is that you can use your cashless debit card to make purchases online. Even if you were in a remote community—obviously, one with internet reception—you could use your phone or other device to make purchases online.

So we will continue to work with the card, to the extent that we're able, to make the card operate in exactly the same way, with no discernible difference, as any other debit card that might be in your wallet or mine here tonight, with the exception, through the product-level blocking mechanism, that the prohibited items of alcohol and gambling products would not be able to be purchased on the card.