A change of custom.

Visitors to this country have long been intrigued by a quaint Australian custom when it comes to paying for a round of drinks.
Customers in clubs and pubs pony up the money at the time the bar person sets the drinks in front of them.

In America, Britain and the countries of the European Union such drinks are entered onto a bar tab - and this tab is settled at the end of the drinking session.

It seems that such a system may be introduced here in an attempt to reduce the amount of money held in pubs and clubs and make them less inviting targets for armed holdups - but there will be many problems.

The idea is to encourage payment for meals, drinks and poker machine money to be made by some sort of credit card. Obviously, paying for each round of drinks individually with a credit card would be unworkable - hence the introduction of a drinks tab.

Presumably a credit card transaction would allow the selected wager to be credited to the chosen poker machine - and winnings would not be paid out in cash - but credited back to that credit card.
The down side of this idea is the probability of problem gamblers continuing to gamble and erode their credit - rather than cease when they ran out of cash money.
It will be fiercely opposed by the anti-gambling lobby.

There will also be problems with the introduction of bar tabs. These would be workable in areas of quiet trading, but pubs and clubs which draw huge crowds to gigs featuring popular bands would be faced with a nightmare. Apart from trying to keep track of individual tabs there would be those would did a runner when payment was due - plus the occasional happy drunk who waited till closing time to announce that his credit card was maxed out !

Psychologists may ponder why Australia chose cash with service rather than the American and European system, but this can probably be traced back to our early convict days.
Perhaps hoteliers were a mistrustful lot when it came to extending credit in those uncertain times - and so our " cash up front " custom became the norm.