Denaria Europe is a European confederation established this month in Brussels to defend access to cash. Specifically, the Spanish organisation Denaria, founded in 2021, has integrated with Denaria Portugal, the French Droit au Cash, and the Swedish Kontantupporet. There is a formal launch of the association on 14 October in Brussels. Registration to attend is required.

This year the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) ran its European and Emerging Markets event as a roadshow with one meeting in Madrid and another in Berlin in the same week at the start of June. We report here on three presentations from the conference – an overview of Germany, a report from the European Commission on progress with the Legal Tender Cash Regulation, and a detailed report from Piraeus Bank about what is happening to cash in Greece.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes with a whole language associated with it. It also comes with a thousand different views on whether it is a threat, an opportunity or something else. All agree that it represents a fundamental shift in how we live and work; we just haven’t worked out what it will mean. The world of currency and payments is not immune.

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has published a position paper outlining its Cash Smart Strategy, which aims to reduce the cost of cash, ensure it is broadly and equitably accessible across urban and rural areas and promote the ethical, secure and accountable stewardship of physical currency.

A Finextra article argues that Africa’s successful fintechs need to move on to tackle interoperability if they are to thrive.

First the Digital Euro inched forward when the European Parliament’s (EP) Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee supported the European Central Bank’s (ECB) plans for a digital euro. Then it jumped another hurdle on its route to becoming a financial instrument when the Regulation on the digital euro was approved by the EP.

Artificial intelligence (AI) threatens the banking system from a number of directions, according to an article by Chris Skinner. Putting the risk that there is an AI bubble to one side, there are three additional areas of risk.

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has published a position paper outlining its Cash Smart Strategy, which aims to reduce the cost of cash, ensure it is broadly and equitably accessible across urban and rural areas and promote the ethical, secure and accountable stewardship of physical currency.

At the end of June, the Bank of England launched a consultation about the future of the UK’s retail payment infrastructure. The consultation focuses on the core clearing and messaging infrastructure needed to support the National Payments Vision for the future of retail payments.

Denaria Europe is a European confederation established this week in Brussels to defend access to cash. Specifically, the Spanish organisation Denaria, founded in 2021, has integrated with Denaria Portugal, the French Droit au Cash, and the Swedish Kontantupporet.

Austria’s central bank (OeNB) hosted on 8 July a forum open to all about the digital euro and payments. It focused on the current challenges and opportunities of the digital euro which it presents as a common, European solution for payment transactions. It focused on the current challenges and opportunities of the digital euro which it presents as a common, European solution for payment transactions.

Cash & Payment News™ sister publication Currency News™ runs a periodic series looking at the latest central bank annual reports in the context of cash activities – production, circulation, counterfeiting etc. In this equivalent period series, we will be looking at those same reports in the context of digital payments.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes with a whole language associated with it. It also comes with a thousand different views on whether it is a threat, an opportunity or something else. All agree that it represents a fundamental shift in how we live and work; we just haven’t worked out what it will mean. The world of currency and payments is not immune.

This year the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) ran its European and Emerging Markets event as a roadshow with one meeting in Madrid and another in Berlin in the same week at the start of June. We report here on three presentations from the conference – an overview of Germany, a report from the European Commission on progress with the Legal Tender Cash Regulation, and a detailed report from Piraeus Bank about what is happening to cash in Greece.

The UK Government has commissioned an independent review to examine the impact of bank branch closures.

Ryozo Himino, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan, recently spoke about the singleness of money and the role of central banks. In his speech he noted the divergent approaches being taken by the US and Europe (GENIUS Act and the digital euro), stating that they may not serve as a model for Japan to follow given that they are heading in different directions, limiting the room for global consensus standards to emerge. Also, unlike the dollar, the yen is not the world’s key currency and Japan is an individual nation state with its own currency that is not a tool for regional integration.

The Canadian government is planning to ban Canada’s estimated 4,000 crypto capable ATMs after concluding that they are being used by scammers to defraud users.

In an Act about housing supply, the US Senate included a ban on the Federal Reserve issuing or creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC), or any substantially similar distributed ledger technology (DLT) based digital asset, until the end of 2030, including via intermediaries. The bill now goes back to the House of Representatives.

Danmarks Nationalbank has published a paper about cash use in Denmark. The paper draws on the results of the latest survey of citizens’ payment habits, which took place in the autumn of 2025 – the latest in a series that started in 2017.

Currency in circulation (CIC) is often the first data point that is referred to when considering where cash is going and the health of cash systems. And on this measure, there are positive signs across many Asian markets. In an initial sample of eight economies, CIC grew between 45% and 349% over the period 2016 to 2024. In these markets, all have seen CIC grow in every year except Malaysia (0.2% decline in 2022, otherwise growth) and Australia (1.6% decline in 2023, current CIC is at an all-time high).