For Europe, the key piece of environmental legislation is the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The European Commission estimates 50,000 companies around the world will be affected, with the first companies having to apply the new rules from as early as 2025, for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2024.

The Bank of Canada (BOC) carries out regular Methods of Payment (MOP) surveys to measure payment method adoption, use at the point of sale (POS) and perceptions about payment methods. This helps the BOC with its management of banknotes and understanding of digital currencies and may help with its work on a possible Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

A few days after celebrating its 90th anniversary, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shakti Kant Das has announced several new payment initiatives.

The rise of cashless payments has raised the concern that some consumers will be induced to spend beyond their means. As monthly income is spent over the course of a month, if consumers are aware of their reducing balance, they are likely to constrain their spending. The Swiss National Bank has published a paper that explores differences in how freely people spend between people who pay in cash and digitally and how their awareness of their balances affects their cash management.

The authors of a new European Central Bank (ECB) working paper have used data from the ECB’s Consumer Expectations Surveys (CES) to study cashless payments in everyday situations and the use of mobile banking apps in the euro area.

Sweden’s Riksbank has issued its latest CBDC phase review. This fourth phase built on a previous phase that trialled offline token-based payments to explore an offline e-Krona based on account balances.

Digital-only financial inclusion (DoFI) can increase convenience for financially included people, and lead to cost savings for providers of financial services. On the back of this, today digital payments are promoted by governments and digital payment companies alike as a solution to financial inclusion for all. A recently published paper examines the dangers of DoFI.

Payment technology has had a bad time in the UK recently. Four major firms have had IT issues that hit contactless payments– two food outlets (McDonalds and Greggs), two supermarkets (Sainsbury’s and Tesco).

This is an abridged version of an NCR Atleos article written about ATM network options that financial institutions (FIs) have if they don’t have the reach of the largest institutions. It explores the pros and cons of either joining a shared network or signing up with an independent ATM network.

BANTAS is a joint subsidiary of three commercial banks, and the leading cash services provider in Turkey. It has about 1,800 employees, 46 cash centres with 490 armoured vehicles across the country. It is the sole provider in Northern Cyprus.

The end of the ‘cash era’, announced by The Economist 15 years ago, has not arrived. On the contrary, in a contactless but crisis-ridden world, cash is leaving wallets and taking refuge in mattresses. This article from Marc Schwartz, Chairman and CEO of Monnaie de Paris, was first published by Cash Essentials.

It appears that Vermont is the latest US state to consider introducing legislation to force cash acceptance.

Franklin Noll of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has written a payment systems research briefing note on what can be learnt from the experience of retail CBDCs (rCBDC) in the Caribbean.

Defining the right privacy level for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is a critical decision when designing a CBDC. The Bank of Canada has published a Staff Working Paper that focuses on the needs of businesses and considers the options.

Innovation in contactless payment technology, the COVID-19 pandemic, increased e-commerce, and enhanced transparency, security, and convenience have transformed the retail payment markets in the last few years.

The European Central Bank has started to make the case for a digital euro. The central bank's Programme Director Digital Euro recently noted that a digital euro, while complementing cash, would strengthen Europe’s strategic sovereignty by reducing dependence on non-European payment providers and offer another form of trusted and secure transactions for people in Europe.

The Dutch National Bank (DNB) has published a working paper detailing research on a transition from an economy without a CBDC to one with it.

A new CashEssentials paper addresses the questions ‘Is cash a public good?’ and ‘Is it a basic right?’ with the aim of clarifying the debate and advancing policy recommendations.

The Federal Reserve has published its 2023 findings on consumer payment behaviour. Confusingly, this is based on the 2022 survey.

The Federal Reserve has published a paper on what happens to international payments and the role of the dollar should a US Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) be issued.

The second payment methods survey of companies in Switzerland took place in Spring 2023, with 1,750 companies taking part.

A study of the use of mobile money in Bangladesh gives a new perspective on how it differs from other payment methods.

The ability of private citizens to execute electronic transactions using a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), central bank money, introduces new monetary stability challenges. A paper by Harald Uhlig from the University of Chicago considers this. The paper is highly theoretical but raises the sort of questions central banks have to get right in their planning for a CBDC.

The first afternoon of the second Cash Sustainability Forum (CSF), which takes place in Frankfurt from 24-26 June this year, will be a workshop dedicated to the recycling and recirculation of cash. It will build on a white paper currently being researched and prepared, and for which input is still very welcome.

This year, the International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) is concentrating on cash visibility and collaboration.

Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (KBBNS) will host a dedicated event to bring the international central bank community together around the future role cash will play in society.

In a push to advance cashless transactions, four Czech banks are rolling out a novel solution that lets merchants skip traditional terminals while eliminating the need for customers to pay in cash.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has published an article in its Bulletin about cash usage. The article starts by explaining that transactional demand is hard to calculate and then goes on to use four different methods to establish a range of estimates.

This article provides summary of how payments are changing as technology changes and is adopted. Also, an update on AI ‘watermarking’.

The CBDC conference returns to Istanbul 10-12 September.

A Bank of Canada staff paper gives useful insight into financial exclusion. It does this in the context of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), but the findings have broad relevance to payments generally.

On 30 June 2022, Italy introduced a law fining merchants €30, plus 4% of the transaction value, if they did not accept a card payment. This law, along with vigorous promotion of card payments, has led Italy to having some of the highest rates of card accepting merchants per million inhabitants in Europe.

Why would JPMorgan Chase spend billions of dollars expanding its branch network while in the UK every retail bank is closing bank branches? Why would the Bank of Ireland invest heavily in new ATMs and refurbished branches while the UK looks at hubs and pods to serve their customers?

A technical article by Manuel Muñoz and Oscar Soons, unusually, considers the role of CBDCs as a store of value instrument for consumers.

A new version of the famous Monopoly board game has been created, ‘Monopoly Voice Banking’, that has replaced paper cash with a voice-activated banker.

2024 has kicked off with a focus on cash, particularly a series of initiatives to safeguard access to cash.

The European Union has developed plans to reduce money laundering. This includes a limit on cash payments of €10,000 (versus €3,000 as previously proposed).

Dr Franklin Noll, a payments specialist who works as a Lead at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, has posted in LinkedIn an interesting piece on financial / payment inclusion. He has expressed his own opinions, not those of the Federal Reserve Bank.

India’s economy has, like most countries, been buffeted by unexpected shocks over the last few years. Cash was disrupted by the November 2016 demonetisation exercise and by the pandemic.

ATM Marketplace has identified three key areas for innovation for ATMs in 2024 – use of AI, video banking, and cash automation.

In 2023 we continued to cover cash, payments and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). This article provides a swift summary of the year that was.

Even China isn’t immune from ‘less cash’. One bank, ICBC, has taken action in Taizhou in Jiangsu to remind people about the requirement for merchants to accept cash in its branches.

A Barbadian bank announced that it will introduce fees from 1 February.

The ECB is looking to sign five agreements worth about €1.1 billion for a four year pilot of a Digital Euro starting early 2025.

Leon Schumacher, from Digital Ekho, gave the opening talk at the AI & CB (Artificial Intelligence and Central Bank) online conference in December. For those new to AI, it provided a fast overview of what AI is and some of the issues connected to it.

However you want to cut it, NCR Atleos (Atleos) is big in all thing’s ATMs. Data as of 23 June 2023, used in its September 2023 investor day, showed that it had over 800,000 installed ATMs.

Whether you agree with Henry Ford, ‘History is bunk’, or George Santayana, ‘Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it’, a paper from the Department of Economic History at Uppsala University gives an interesting perspective on the risks of introducing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Cash & Payment News™ (CPN) was first published in July 2018 as the successor to Payment News Quarterly. While Currency News™ focuses on the product that is ‘cash’, CPN has concentrated on the use of cash once issued.

An International Monetary Fund paper uses data from Uganda to understand whether digital payment innovations, particularly mobile money payments, will increase financial inclusion and if it will reduce people’s preference for cash.