Atlantic Council has published an article looking at the growth of using local currencies for cross-border payments rather than the US dollar. The article concludes that this change has been driven by a wish to reduce costs, limit exposure to foreign-exchange volatility, and lessen vulnerabilities stemming from reliance on a handful of major currencies for cross-border payment transactions.

Chris Skinner’s new book, The Intelligent Bank, is not about cash1. He writes about how banking, having become digital, is now on a journey to become intelligent. He argues that this requires a fundamentally new way of working because it requires smart data. There are, perhaps, two key lessons which apply to cash and the cash cycle.

Diederik Bruggink, Senior Director – Payments, Digital Finance and Innovation (WSBI-ESBG), has published an article in the Journal of Payments Strategy & Systems: ‘A Tale of Transactions: An analysis of Retail Payments in the Euro Area’ posted on LinkedIn about it (Post | LinkedIn). The paper takes a data-driven look at how Europeans really pay today – across cash, debit cards and e-money – using the European Central Bank (ECB) SPACE 2024 study and the ECB Data Portal, with the aim of adding to the current debate about a possible holding limit for the digital euro.

A consortium of major European banks are working on a privately-issued digital euro. However, the European Central Bank (ECB) argues that euro-denominated stablecoins are not an effective way to strengthen the euro’s international appeal.

The CPT Group has published a comparative analysis of recent consumer payments surveys from Switzerland, Australia, and Jamaica, drawing some striking parallels despite the three countries' very different payment landscapes.

Reuters reports the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is considering new controls for high-value transactions due to a rise in digital frauds.

The European Payment Initiative and the Digital Euro aim to gain European payment independence from the US payment giants.

The banking sector has been quick to highlight downsides in President Donald Trump’s suggestion of a one-year 10% cap on credit card interest rates in the US.

A Bank of Canada Staff Discussion Paper calculates the marginal cost of an electronic funds transfer (EFT) to be about C$0.55 per transaction ($0.4) and the total fixed cost of running an EFT to be C$83 million per year ($60.23 million).

A new Deutsche Bundesbank study, ‘The cost of payment methods in the retail sector accessible’, analyses both monetary costs – fees, charges, equipment and transport costs – and non-monetary costs – the time spent by retailers using payment instruments at the point of sale or for administrative expenses.