Last year, the International Banknote Designers Association (IBDA) held a virtual conference. One speaker, Dr Franklin Noll, presented his thoughts on how we’ll be paying in ten years time.

A recent webinar organised by Enryo, an independent consultancy, invited four experts to consider digital inclusion. Speakers addressed how to overcome the very real problem of proving identity and what needs to be done to accelerate digital inclusion.

A CoinDesk columnist, J P Koning, has bravely made five predictions about the future of money.

Philip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), spoke recently at a conference about the future of payments in Australia. He said that the direction of change was ‘pretty clear’.

With the UK recently hosting the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), companies in the UK cash cycle are thinking about what they can do to play their part.

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.

The Dutch National Bank (DNB) spoke at the recent ICCOS seminar about the McKinsey study commissioned to consider the cash infrastructure the Netherlands will need for the next 10 years. With cash transactions having recovered to 20% of transactions, down from 32% pre-pandemic, the Netherlands is preparing for a less cash society.

The future of cash is, without doubt, the most discussed, presented and written about topic in the cash and retail payments industry during the last 10 years. The topic took on a new dimension with the arrival of COVID-19, the effects of which feature in a discussion paper, titled simply ‘The Future of Cash’.

In place of the annual in-person Future of Cash Conference™, a series of virtual events have been staged. The most recent was an Asia Pacific-focused two-day virtual conference held across four themed sessions in July.

There have been a number of articles this year about financial products targeting children with the aim of teaching them to save, spend and think about money ready for when they are adults.