On 5 February 2025, the Deutsche Bundesbank held its sixth cash symposium in Berlin. Around 120 participants from politics, industry and society attended.

In the context of the decline of cash usage in Sweden, the Deputy Governor of Sweden’s Riksbank, Aino Bunge, has emphasised the need for regulation to protect the status of cash at a seminar in Sweden’s parliament.

The High Security Printing (HSP) Latin America conference will take place 9-11 June in Rio de Janeiro. The call for papers is open until 10 March and the early registration discount ends on 16 March. On Monday 9 June there will be a day long workshop dedicated to sustainability.

A recent survey has shown that the Israeli public is open to using a Digital Shekel. While 51% of respondents had either a high or intermediate interest in the digital currency, privacy did not rank as particularly important, and interest in the CBDC increased with age.

A new paper by the European Money & Finance Forum (SUERF) examines the importance of words. It examines the words and language used to in current economic and policy discussions of these developments in digital money and payments because their use is causing confusion.

Lars Hupel, from Giesecke+Devrient (G+D), makes the case for the importance of offline functionality in payments in a new white paper titled ‘Secure Offline Digital Payments’.

In the UK at the end of January Barclays Bank had a major IT outage, followed by HSBC, which meant customers could not use their online banking. At the same time Lloyds Bank and NatWest have announced even more bank branch closures and the UK government has confirmed it will not require retailers to accept cash payments.

Every country has the ‘unbanked’, those without access to the financial system. A paper at the end of last year from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia explored the situation in the US by looking at the biennial Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked between 2015 and 2019. The paper aimed to understand those who are unbanked and how these relationships evolved.

The singleness of money is that principle that all different forms of money must have the same value at all times and be interchangeable at par and without cost. A criticism of regulators such as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and Bank of England (BoE) is that stablecoins may undermine the ‘singleness of money’.

A new white paper investigates how cash management is changing and best practice for optimising efficiency, thereby reducing the cost and environmental impact of cash. Written by John Winchcombe of Reconnaissance International (co-publishers of Cash & Payment News™) and Paul Blond of The Blond Group, with help from the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA), the paper focuses on what happens to cash once it has been issued, because that is where the majority of the environmental impact of cash occurs.

The European Intelligent Cash Protection Association (EURICPA), the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) and the European Security Transport Association (ESTA) have announced new three way strategic partnerships aimed at strengthening ATM security, tackling physical attacks on cash machines and cash transportation security.

The Banque de France’s First Deputy Governor, speaking at the Central Bank Payments Conference in Paris in earlier this month, has said that it is addressing the significant changes in the payment system through a regulatory framework that is demanding but innovation friendly and making changes to ensure central bank money remains at the heart of settlement between intermediaries.

France has witnessed an unprecedented decline in physical attacks by criminals on ATMs, thanks to cutting-edge developments in security technology. Over the past decade, the implementation of Intelligent Banknote Neutralization Systems (IBNS) by Oberthur Cash Protection has played a pivotal role in this transformation.

The Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT) published its phase 1 evaluation report of its CBDC project in December 2023 having completed proof of concept studies and a pilot phase run as an R&D project. In the pilot, first payment transactions on the Digital Turkish Lira System were executed successfully. This report shared design choices and approaches adopted in this stage of the project.

Data both allows and creates questions. Answering questions generates information. Information allows decisions and actions. Without accurate, relevant, reliable, consistent, standardised and timely data, creating and delivering anything is hard, particularly change.

The effect of financial inclusion (FI) on financial stability has gained attention in recent years because of its importance for effective policymaking. While policymakers aim to achieve FI and financial stability goals simultaneously, overlooking the potential trade-offs between them can expose economies to costly systemic crises or hinder the progress of FI.

The headlines in the European Central Bank’s (ECB) 2024 study on the payment attitudes of consumers in the euro area (SPACE) paint an interesting picture for cash payments, both alone and relative to other payment instruments.

The Bundesbank has published the third module of its study into the costs of cash and card payments from the consumer’s point of view.

Members of the UK’s Cash Industry Environmental Charter (CIEC) Group have shared best practice and worked together since 2021 with the aim of reducing the carbon footprint of notes and coins in the cash cycle.

In a special report 01/2025, ‘Digital payments in the EU’ (European Union), the European Court of Auditors says that EU’s approach to digital payments has helped to make them ‘safer, faster and cheaper for users’.