Following the success of the Future of Cash online event in February 2021, the organisers – AGIS Consulting and CashEssentials – are continuing the conversation and providing a coherent story of today’s cash challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities. The next virtual event – taking place 6-7 July – will focus specifically on the Asia-Pacific region. The physical event is still on track to go ahead on the 9-10 November, in Madrid, Spain.

Deutsche Bank has announced that it will close 150 bank and Postbank branches this year and a further 50 Postbank branches next year. The CEO said that customers are coming to branches less often, preferring to use digital products such as remote advisory video sessions. In January Commerzbank announced it would close 340 branches in Germany.

After several months of a COVID-enforced digital only publication of Cash & Payment News™, we are happy to announce the resumption of the hard-copy distribution of the newsletter from June. Thank you for your patience during the disruption and we ask for a little more forbearance as delivery services attempt to return to something like their pre-COVID levels.

YouGov have issued their 2021 Global Banking and Finance Report, having surveyed 1,000 people in 17 countries representing a nationally representative sample with three exceptions. These were China, where sampling was ‘online representative’, India ‘nationally urban representative’ and Mexico, which was nationally representative but with an urban bias. Six Asian countries were involved – Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Singapore.

Card fees are complicated. CMSPI have issued a useful paper looking at Germany’s payment market and what has happened since 2015. The Merchant Service Charge (MSC), what merchants pay to receive a payment from their customer, consists of three elements, as below.

The Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) conference has now moved wholly online on 4-6 October 2021. Registration is now open.

Finextra has published an article highlighting different visions for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Governor at the Bank of England, made a speech that said it was ‘probable’ that the ‘state will need to issue, public money’.

A recent article by the Dutch National Bank (DNB) explained that, as a consequence of the pandemic, its intake of banknotes has fallen to the extent that it is now issuing more euro banknotes than it is getting back in, a first since it started issuing them. The number of notes issued fell by 10% in 2020 but the number of notes received fell by more, by 25%.

The European Association for Secure Transactions (EAST) has issued its 2020 report on ATM crime. EAST collects data from 21 Western European countries operating about 335,000 ATMs, 223,000 unattended payment terminals and 14.5 million point-of-sale (POS) terminals.

Enryo, a financial services consultancy, conducted four public surveys of over 2,000 people in the UK from April 2020 to January 2021 and an additional survey in March 2021. It has just issued its report and presented a webinar of its results.

The Banking Journal of the American Bankers Association (ABA) published an article ‘The Real Story On Bank Branch Closures’, about the decline in bank branches in the US. It was responding to a story in NPR that painted a picture of bank closures leaving whole communities devoid of bank branches, particularly in lower-income, rural and at-risk communities.

The Bank of England and the UK’s Treasury have created a taskforce to coordinate the exploration of a potential UK Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The announcement was at pains to explain that this was not intended to replace cash and bank deposits and that the UK has not made the decision whether or not to introduce a CBDC.

We are pleased to announce the formation of an Advisory Panel to help determine the direction and development of Cash & Payment News™. The following have kindly agreed to participate in this panel.

As part of its National Payment System, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is considering a new domestic card and payment system and has issued a consultation paper.

Augustin Carstens, General Manager at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), made a speech at the end of March considering progress with CBDCs. He explained how the simpler payment process with CBDCs reduced risks, costs and time while addressing the weaknesses of today’s payment system - high credit card and cross border payment fees, a lack of universal access to digital payment tools and weak governance frameworks on big tech and other providers’ use of transaction data.

ADAM, which produces cash management software solutions, has written a series of blogs during the pandemic recording what has happened to cash in Italy in the last year. Its latest report updates the series through until December 2020, drawing some initial conclusions.

One of the parts of the cash cycle most affected by the pandemic has been coins. The normal flow has been seriously disrupted as people have switched to card payments or have rounded cash payments to use notes in preference to coins. In February 2020 there were almost £3 million worth of 2p coins held in wholesale cash centres, but demand has continued to outstrip supply almost every week, and in the past twelve months over £2.2 million in new 2p coins have been issued into circulation but never returned. Where are they all and why aren’t the pennies behaving the same?

As the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based on blockchain grows, it is worth returning to an old story reported in an MIT Technology Review in February 2019.

Outman Consulting has published a review of cash usage in Southern Europe, focusing on Italy and Spain. It surveyed 2,000 consumers in Italy and Spain in January 2021 to understand the impact on payments of the pandemic. It found that, for purchases under €10, the preference for using cash had declined from 78% to about 48%. Why and will the change stick?

With Sweden’s decline in cash usage, Sveriges Riksbank is less involved in the payment system and is, therefore, less able to meet the requirement placed on it to promote a safe and efficient payment system. As a result, the Riksbank is conducting a pilot project to create a token-based Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) known as the e-krona.