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.

Jens Eberhardt, Managing Director of Cashinfrapro, has written a useful paper – ‘Green Cash Logistics’ – which considers how modern ways of working can reduce the environmental impact of the cash cycle.

Levent Kocbiyik presented at the Cash Cycle Seminar (ICCOS) last year on behalf of the Turkish cash management company Bantas about achieving the right mix of technology in cash handling. He argues that ‘craft’ continues to play a core role as well.

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.

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.