One billion dollars in cash has appeared in Kiwi wallets since last year. 

The Reserve Bank said that in March of 2025, there was $8.59 billion worth of physical cash in circulation. Now, that number has risen to $9.57billion. 

Infometrics Principal Economist Brad Olsen told Heather du Plessis-Allan that the cause of this is likely due to global instability. 

"I wouldn't be surprised if the Iran war through the month of March, cause some people to think that, you know, there was some pretty big issues out there and maybe they wanted to have a little bit more physical cash with them."

He likened the jump in the amount of cash to a similar increase that happened at the start of the COVID pandemic. 

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