Kinda missing the forest for the trees here. What I’m driving at is that New Zealand and the United States are not easily comparable and just because New Zealand is doing a thing it does not follow that the United States also shall successfully pursue and accomplish the same policy objectives. Even a straight comparison between Australia and New Zealand is difficult and both their system of government and their banking system are closer in form with each other than with the United States, and there's a lot fewer people in a lot fewer places to just straight up disagree and subvert the efforts and policy objectives of the Federal Government, no matter what they may be. If a Presidential candidate ever did make it a platform issue, you could probably expect his opponents to take the opposite approach.

What the United States lacks is the kind of central control that a Westminster-style of government can exercise, even over cash money and checks, and there are a lot more institutions with some say over the continued prevalence of cash so even as its usage declines it is unlikely to completely disappear even in our lifetimes. Even if Chase stops giving their customers checkbooks, it doesn’t mean M&T will, and even if M&T does, it doesn’t mean there won’t be a bank that makes it a point to offer free checkbooks as a value add to small business owners that want to continue issuing paper checks to their employees. The form money takes here tends to be additive, and it is rare for a system to ever completely disappear. I mean next on the chopping block is probably Zelle followed by ACH of all things now that we have FedNow, and even that’s not necessarily going to happen.