Both expected cash would be around for some time yet, but Mr Ranson felt the virus would bring forward its demise.

Many retailers are discouraging customers from paying in cash if possible as a way to decrease potential coronavirus infections and some - entertainment products chain Sanity, for example - have temporarily banned payments in cash.

The use of cash had already been declining quickly in Australia for years.

Tasmanian-based Mr Eslake said it was reasonable to expect businesses declining or discouraging cash payments would "accelerate a decline in the use of cash that has been occurring for some time now".

He said a Reserve Bank survey of payment methods showed 27 per cent of payments made by Australians were in cash in 2019.

That was down from 37 per cent in 2016, 47 per cent in 2013 and 69 per cent in 2007.

"Although the RBA survey also found that cash is still used for 45 per cent of payments under $5, it also found that around one third of Australians didn't use cash at all in a typical week, compared with 18 per cent in the 2016 survey" Mr Eslake said.

He said just 2 per cent of the value of transactions in Sweden involved cash, while about 83 per cent of payments in China were made by mobile payment methods.

" For all that, it's unlikely that the use of cash will disappear completely any time soon," Mr Eslake said.

"Some people, especially senior citizens and those with very limited financial resources, are likely to continue to prefer cash.

"Some people prefer cash for privacy reasons, not all of them legal.

"And many people may want to keep some cash on hand for use in circumstances such as interruptions to electricity supply, or electronic payments systems infrastructure failures, during which it may not be possible to make payments by other means."

Bank of us chief executive Mr Ranson also believed cash would be around for a while.

He said there was still a subset of the community "wedded to cash", including some older people, while some people with intellectual difficulties were more comfortable with cash.

"In a trend sense, I might have said cash would be here for another 10-20 years, but it may be a shorter timeframe (because of the virus measures)," he said.

He said the group which only used cash was shrinking, partly because of natural attrition and partly because of people switching to cards and other payment methods, which was being encouraged where possible because of the virus.

"Once you start to use a card or internet banking, it's not that difficult once you get used to it," he said.

Mr Ranson said cash-only customers were being encouraged to start using cards partly because it would give them an alternative if cash was deemed too risky to use because of the virus

About 97 per cent of the Tasmanian bank's transactions did not involve cash.