Cash resilience: the infrastructure question behind the future of payments
The importance of cash is growing as its role as a resilience asset, a financial inclusion mechanism and a contingency payment method is increasingly recognised. It is against this background that the International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) has spent 18 months on a series of events exploring the future of key cash stakeholders.
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Currency Complexity in Cambodia: Cash and Bakong, Riel and Dollar
A new MPRA paper reviews possible changes to cash circulation governance in Cambodia, examining de-dollarisation challenges, the Bakong digital payment system, and lessons from four other central banking systems.
Canada: Cash Remains a Cornerstone of the Monetary Landscape
A new Bank of Canada 2025 Methods of Payment Survey finds cash use at the point of sale remains stable, holdings are growing, and public perception of cash is increasingly positive – affirming its enduring role in economic resilience and inclusion.
Understanding the Impact of Digital Payments
CPMI data shows digital payment use continued to rise in 2024 across 31 jurisdictions, with growth especially strong in emerging economies — but the on-the-ground picture remains inconsistent, reflecting local circumstances.
Who Pays for Payments?
A Harvard Business School working paper analyses US payment interchange fees to reveal how wealth is redistributed across income groups – finding that cash and debit users effectively subsidise high-reward credit card holders to the tune of $30 billion a year.
CBDC News
Vietnam's government has tasked the State Bank of Vietnam to research, propose mechanisms, and conduct pilot implementations of a national digital currency in 2029 and 2030, in coordination with the Ministry of Finance and other relevant ministries and agencies.
Cash Acceptance in the Eurosystem: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The ECB's 2026 survey of companies across 21 Eurosystem countries finds cash acceptance rising to 92%, yet growing concerns about changing consumer behaviour and declining bank branch access cast a shadow over the outlook.
China Smashes the Time and Cost of Cross-Border Payments
Perhaps the future of cross-border payments is with us. China has now completed its first outbound payment via Cross-Border e-CNY Transfer Services platform (CBETS) to Malaysia, settling a 43,000 yuan shipment of fresh durian. The transaction was executed by China Construction Bank’s Xiamen branch in coordination with its Labuan branch in Malaysia, using direct bank to bank ledger transfers and on the fly conversion into Malaysian ringgit.
Central Banks and Payments
Cash & Payment News™ sister publication Currency News™ runs a periodic series looking at the latest central bank annual reports in the context of cash activities – production, circulation, counterfeiting etc. In this equivalent period series, we will be looking at those same reports in the context of digital payments.
Payment News
For the first time, in the first quarter of 2026 card payments at POS terminals have exceeded cash withdrawals from ATMs in Albania. The central bank has introduced a requirement for entities operating in the tourism and transport sectors to have POS terminals, leading to an increase of over 6,000 units, twice that of the previous period. The number of banking transactions per capita has increased by 30%, reflecting the expansion of the use of electronic payment services.
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