In 2020 consumers made 15.5 billion debit card payments in the UK. Mastercard has just said that over half of the world’s in person payments are now made using contactless technology.

In countries where less cash is already underway, there is an underlying assumption that it is only a matter of time before cash will reach a tipping point that makes digital payments a requirement. The unstated assumption is that cash will end, and that digital is the future. There is an urgency, therefore, to make digital payments work.

Seigniorage income has long been a central bank source of finance which, if allowed to be retained, means central banks do not require direct funding from the government of the day in their country.

12 editions of Cash & Payment News™, 12 weeks of Digital Currency News™. What have we learnt? What has changed?

David Sax, a journalist, has written a book ‘Revenge of the Analog: Real things and why they matter’. He makes an interesting case for analogue products such as banknotes. The digital world has been with us for over 20 years, and it has brought significant benefits, usually related to convenience, choice and cost.

Whilst we may all be tired of hearing about COVID-19 and its impact on just about everything to do with our everyday lives, it is important for those involved with cash and payments to examine its impact on cash and payments to date and perhaps, more importantly still, the implications for the future.

Ross MacDiarmid, Executive Director of the Mint Directors Conference (MDC), hosted Professor Pasquale Sgro, Professor Franz Seitz and Guillaume Lepecq to consider the question in the title, under the banner of ‘no such thing as a free lunch’.

LINK, who run the UK’s main shared interbank network of cash machines, has commissioned a report to look at how the UK’s cash distribution industry can reduce its carbon footprint.

In September 2020 Reconnaissance Consulting Group was asked to consider what would happen to cash at a future moment where the world economy and society had re-opened living with COVID.

The Dutch National Bank (DNB) has written to the Dutch House of Representatives presenting its report, ‘The Future of Cash Infrastructure in the Netherlands’. The DNB commissioned a study from McKinsey in December last year as the basis for this report.