The Federal Reserve has started a publicity campaign for its FedCash E-Manifest Service.

New Jersey, in the US, has made a law limiting surcharges applied by merchants on consumers who prefer to pay by card rather than by cash.

Austria is looking at including the right to use cash in its constitution. A task force is looking at putting the right to pay with physical money and to guarantee access to ATMs.

Safaricom has increased both the account and daily transaction limits on its M-Pesa mobile money service from KSh 300,000 to KSh 500,000, approximately $3,477. The limit for an individual transaction remains at Ksh 150,000.

Planning for the third euro series is underway. The Theme Advisory Group has issued a shortlist of six themes following an internal voting procedure.

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank is to scrap over-the-counter cash withdrawals at new cashless bank branches. Cash will still be available at ATMs.

The Dutch Finance Minister has proposed legislation to ensure the provision of cash facilities, at least to a basic level. The legislation builds on the results of a PwC study on the future structure of the system for banknote and coin deposits and withdrawals for consumers and retailers.

Visa carried out a Consumer Payment Attitudes study in Singapore in October 2022. It found that nearly 90% of Singaporean consumers regard cashless payments and mobile banking to be the most eco-friendly option.

The latest Federal Reserve Payments Study shows an annual 6.2% increase in the number of card payments between 2018 and 2021. Behind that figure there are fluctuations, a fall in 2020 being offset by a rise in 2021, for example.

The European Payments Initiative (EPI) was established to build a unified pan-European payment system to rival Mastercard and Visa. Consumers and merchants would be able to use a card, digital wallet and make person-to-person payments. The idea was backed by the European Central Bank (ECB) and 31 banks joined the EPI.