In Israel’s ongoing war against unreported income and money laundering state officials are developing a plan that would set a ceiling on cash transactions of 7,500 shekels. The state committee that is formulating a plan for taking Israel to a digital monetary market is headed by Harel Locker, bureau chief in the Prime Minister’s Office.
The committee is also seeking to limit the use of checks, preferring to shift the economy to digital traceable currency including debit and credit cards and increasing use of one’s smartphone with the various payment and wallet apps available. The committee will eventually compel Israel’s banks to shift to the new digital realities by compelling account holders to make the change.
The program is divided into three stages, with the first being limiting the use of cash following by limiting checks and finally encouraging digital payment.
In a later stage the ceiling for cash transactions will be lowered to 5,000 shekels and eliminating checks entirely. At this stage these are only recommendations.
Today’s law limits cash transactions between businesses to 20,000 shekels. It does not address transactions between businesses and private people.
According to the Prime Minister’s Office, in 2012 there were three million transactions over 5,000 shekels that did not include information identifying the parties and they totaled 273 billion shekels.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
that’s discrimination against chareidim, who aren’t supposed to have smartphones
🙂
Are they also going to do something about the exorbitant fees charged for every transaction that runs through the bank?
Right now it makes much more sense to pull a chunck of money from the bank and then handle all the small transactions cash because otherwise you end up paying amla’ot….
#1 – Charedim can use debit and credit cards…
Just more control and removal of freedom