At the online Future of Cash conference last month, Diederik Bruggink from the European Payment Council (EPC) presented its thoughts on how to make cash more efficient.

This is the title of a new Cash Essentials paper. The paper considers the role cash plays in economic and social life, the challenges it faces and how innovation is improving the efficiency of the cash cycle. The paper includes the line, ‘the capacity for cash to change will be integral to its continuing success’, and it goes on to explore what the future holds.

In the three months leading up to 9 December, NatWest, a UK bank, brought together 36 organisations to establish cross industry working groups to improve the environmental performance of the UK’s cash cycle. Three working groups were set up looking at energy, plastics and CO2 to establish best practice and to drive change.

The UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) reported on the production and distribution of cash at the end of November. PAC was concerned that the cash distribution infrastructure is at risk, there is a lack of urgency in the response of the public bodies responsible with little action, a lack of clarity about the end goal and no realistic plan. Banknote stocks appear unnecessarily high without a clear explanation of why, and coin production appears unsustainable and not cost effective in the light of falling demand.

In September the UK’s National Audit Office (NAO) – who scrutinise public spending for Parliament – published a report on the ‘Production and Distribution of Cash in the UK’, examining the role played by the public bodies in operating and overseeing the cash system.