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.

Issue data tells us how many new notes and coins the issuing authority is putting into circulation. Issue data is an indicator for suppliers about how much cash central banks are using. It also gives us an indication of economic activity, which is often looked at alongside indicators of general economic activity. Issue data is not usually published by issuing authorities.

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).

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.

Following its recent Malaysian event, the next CB+DC Conference takes place 27-29 October in Amsterdam. Given that the US has just banned any prospect of a retail, or even wholesale, CBDC before 2030 in the same week that the European Parliament is pressing ahead with a digital euro, the timing and location of this event is right in the midst of the debate.

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.

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.

Results of the US Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC) and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC) have been published by the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Boston and Federal Reserve Financial Services1. The DCPC, in which consumers record details of specific transactions (including dollar values) and their payment choices, was conducted in October 2025.

Economists, including those at central banks, and academics track, analyse and use cash in circulation (CIC) data extensively. What does it tell them and is it really useful for ‘cash stakeholders’ (anybody working to provide, manage and circulate cash)?

In a recent paper – Public Discourse on Retail Payments and the Case of CBDC (SAFE Working Paper No. 474, April 2026) – Ulrich Bindseil, former Director General of Market Infrastructure and Payments at the European Central Bank, analyses how stakeholders in the retail payments industry shape public debates and policymaking. His focus is primarily on digital payments, particularly CBDCs, which he argues have triggered unprecedented public debate. Notably, while central banks’ mandate to issue cash is acknowledged, the broader discussion on the role of cash in retail payments is largely omitted.

In a speech at the Banknote Conference on payment choice by Victoria Cleland, the Bank of England’s Executive Director, Payments, cash took centre stage.

With 163 banknote issuing authorities, over 1,000 circulating banknote denominations and a similar number of coins, exploring currency trends can look daunting. Central banks, mints and treasury departments often need to understand design, substrate and security feature trends in the region and wider to explore options. Printers, designers, R&D departments and product managers, suppliers and cash cycle stakeholders also need this information.

18 months after the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) exited the mBridge cross-border project and launched Project Agorá, the fragmentation of cross-border payments has become almost institutionalised.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An excellent session at the Global Currency Forum saw Joash Rono (Central Bank of Kenya), Alberto Torfer (Bank of Mexico), Anwar Bashori (Bank Indonesia – BI), Firat Emre Karakas (Central Bank of Türkiye – CBRT) and Faisal I Algosar (Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority) give the perspective of some high volume economies, a very different set of priorities from other presentations.

At the Global Currency Forum (GCF) in Antalya at the end of April, who said or made a comment along the lines below (answers below)?

There is a very significant focus on the challenges faced when people choose to pay digitally rather than with cash. It seems to be a, if not the, core theme of conferences, publications and public policy wherever you go. Why? And should it be? Two papers reported in this edition suggest it should not – the high volume economies report from the Global Currency Forum (GCF) and the Currency Research Cash Resilience paper.

In conjunction with the UK’s National Westminster bank, Prof Darren Duxbury, behavioural finance expert and Chair in Finance at Newcastle University Business School, has carried out a research project investigating the behavioural traits that influence peoples’ choices of payment method.

Currency Research has published a report on the findings of a survey of 37 central banks across six continents to examine global cash usage trends and the longterm role of physical currency. The report was initiated because the experiences of mature economies are shaping the cash narrative when, in fact, the rest of the world is seeing a very different situation.

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.

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) runs a number of annual surveys to understand payment trends over time and what is happening now. The latest is the 2025 survey of payment methods of 2,000 private individuals, consisting of a questionnaire and the keeping of a payment diary for a seven day period.

Hot on the heels of the Global Currency Forum come three more conferences.

Franklin Noll of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has looked at where stablecoins are held and how they are used in the financial ecosystem in a Payments System Research Briefing.

Norges Bank has now published four reports that led it to conclude in December 2025 that introducing a CBDC was currently not warranted.

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

OMFIF, an independent think tank for central banking, economic policy and public investment, has argued that cash plays a systemic role that no digital payment instrument, no matter how sophisticated, can replicate.

This article was first published in February’s edition of Coin & Mint News™. The issue of estimated coin life has been a subject of speculation for a long time. There are limited data and systematic studies about the life of coins. Publicly available information from world mints suggests that coins could remain in circulation for at least 25 or 30 years. There are other sources suggesting that coins could last in circulation much longer and their lifetime could even exceed 50 years.

The 2025 Australian Consumer Payments Survey shows that cash use has stabilised in recent years.

As geopolitical storms reshape global finance, cash is evolving into a strategic tool for sovereignty, resilience, and trust in an era of fragmentation and digital vulnerability.

Franklin Noll of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has looked at where stablecoins are held and how they are used in the financial ecosystem in a Payments System Research Briefing.

A recent article in the Jamaica Observer focuses on Jamaica’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), known as Jam-Dex . Unusually not only does the article argue for increased usage of the CBDC, but it gives detailed suggestions for how to do this.

John Kiff, who writes as Kiffmeister, has written a series of papers considering the future of retail Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). He started by analysing the CBDCTracker.org database to see what has been happening to CBDC over time. His first findings were that projects are not leading to launches. Some projects have been put on the backburner and some cancelled, never getting out of the research or proof-of-concept phases. Many central banks have refocused to wholesale CBDC-backed tokenised deposits.

On 12 March the first Global Cash Day reached LinkedIn, and perhaps beyond, initiated by the Cash Alliance and picked up by many players in the cash ‘industry’. This article steps back to consider how we develop it to reach further to a much wider audience.

The US Senate has voted 89 to 10 to ban the Federal Reserve from issuing CBDCs until after 2030 as part of a bipartisan housing bill. The bill now moves to the House of Representatives.

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

This year’s High Security Printing (HSP) conference for the Europe, Middle East and African region was the first ever in its 22 year history to be held in the latter region, and the biggest ever – with 341 delegates, 146 organisations and 49 countries attending.

In 2023 in Canada digital payments accounted for 87% of total payment volume. Their uptake is only likely to rise as new ways of payment are invented. On top of open banking, faster payments, variable recurring payments, digital tokens, blockchain-based infrastructure etc. we can already see use cases build around programmability, possibly machine-to-machine payments driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and more.

73.4% of voters endorsed a government proposal to guarantee the right to use cash, require the Swiss National Bank to maintain adequate supplies of notes and coins, and stipulate a nationwide vote to replace the Swiss franc with another currency.

Jeremy Light has published a useful summary of UK payments fraud. While every country will be different, it is interesting to see what criminals are doing and the payment risk involved.

Technological innovation is advancing at a pace that is transforming how societies pay, transact, and interact. Changes that once unfolded over decades now occur within years, fundamentally redefining the role and nature of money. As reflected in our new white paper ‘Currency Fast Forward – Future Developments of the Currency Cycle’ (click here), one insight stands above all: the future of money will not be determined by a choice between physical and digital forms, but by their ability to coexist and reinforce one another. Across all regions, whether they rely heavily on cash, have advanced digital payment systems, or face the cash paradox of declining usage yet rising circulation, public money remains essential. It continues to serve as an anchor of trust, inclusion, and resilience.

Guillaume Lepecq, Chair of Cash Essentials, and Matt Sykes, from the CPT Group, have written a paper about the business model of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). Their conclusion? Circumstances have changed, and ATM business models need rethinking.

On its 50th anniversary, the foreign exchange company Travelex has published its first Travel Money Insights Report. The good news is the headline that 69% of travellers still choose cash.

Here we look at two revolutions going on in payments. The first, QR codes, is well underway. The second, Variable Recurring Payments, is getting going. Both build on the modern payment infrastructure of open banking, real time payments and wallets.

A paper titled ‘Cash Demand and Demographic Changes in Japan’ by Hiroshi Fujiki of Chuo University, published recently by the Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, considers the impact of Japan’s rapidly ageing population and the increase of digital payments.

Perhaps it should be no surprise that the chairman of New Zealand’s (NZ) Ministerial Advisory Group on Transnational, Serious & Organised Crime should say on a podcast that ‘Cash is the primary currency of organised crime. And so a huge amount of our cash right now, as we sit here, is in the hands of organised crime’.

The 10th edition of Currency Research’s (CR) Central Bank Payments Conference is coming to Istanbul, Türkiye, 23–25 March 2026. Designed as a forum for senior-level authorities, the conference brings the global payments community together for three days of policy-level exchange.

A two part IMF blog by Biagio Bossone and Massimo Costa seeks to reframe how central bank money, banknotes, reserves, and CBDCs are regarded, moving them from being seen as a debt to equity for the issuer and as custodial assets for the holders.

In Germany, consumers can pay in unlimited amounts of cash. Only for sums over €10,000 do buyers have to prove their identity and prove the origin of the money.

The European Union Parliament has approved the digital euro initiative, reaching agreement with the European Council on creating a currency that will function both online and offline.

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.

There is that saying, ‘you do what you measure’ and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound) objectives are part of all our lives. Measurement matters.

MyCarbon, a climate consultancy that has previously presented at Cash Sustainability Forums, has developed a structured, online training programme in carbon accounting. The course teaches methodologies fully aligned with the leading international frameworks, including the GHG Protocol, ISO 14064 (Parts 1–3), ISO 14067 (product carbon footprints), ISO 14068 (carbon neutrality), and relevant net-zero guidance, thus enabling organisations to measure and manage their carbon emissions with confidence and credibility.

UK banks have announced plans to create a domestic alternative to Visa and Mastercard, aiming to reduce dependence on US payment networks and enhance financial resilience. This initiative is part of a broader global trend toward monetary sovereignty, accelerated by the election of Donald Trump and geopolitical tensions. The future of payments is expected to be hybrid, with cash playing a crucial role alongside digital innovations.

Last year the Banque de France (BdF) published a report on cash usage in France.

A new paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta seeks to understand whether, how and to what extent merchants in the US influence consumers’ payment choices1. Using the 2024 Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, which recorded stated preferred payment methods and then actual choices at the point-of-sale (POS), the authors analysed why consumers sometimes deviate from their preferred option.

A Bank of Italy paper has pointed out there is a link between permissionless blockchains, the most common settlement infrastructures in the crypto ecosystem, and the volatility of the prices of crypto-assets and the availability and security of these infrastructures.

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.

At the Future of Cash conference in Warsaw last November, there were a number of presentations and conversations about ATM business models and interchange fees.

At the end of last year, the Eurosystem Research Network on Cash (EURECA) held a workshop at the European Central Bank (ECB) to consider the latest currency research.

The CB+DC Conference, which focuses on digital currencies and payments, will hold two events in 2026, one in Kuala Lumpur hosted at Sasana Kijang, the Bank Negara Malaysia’s training facility, 12–14 May and one in Amsterdam 27–29 October. Registration is now open.

The Rwanda Bankers’ Association (RBA) has considered lessons to be learnt from the implementations of CBDC in the Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria.

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).

Data from LINK, in the UK, shows that compared to 2024 ATM transaction volumes were 1.27 billion (down 8.3%) and withdrawal values were £76.67billion (down 4.2%). The average ATM withdrawal value in 2025 was £92.11.

Cash management is changing as cash moves from being a core business for commercial banks and retailers to being a cost centre. Today’s cash management companies (CMC), such as Loomis, are changing their ‘offer’ to that of ‘cash-as-a-service’ rather than just offering traditional cash-in-transit (CIT) cash services.

In 2025 Nigeria suffered from severe cash shortages. In response a special committee was established, chaired by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) Governor Olayemi Cardoso. The committee undertook a holistic and comprehensive end-to-end review of the entire cash lifecycle: from production, to transportation, to distribution, and eventual access by consumers.

The Danish physicist, Niel Bohrs, said, ‘prediction is very difficult, particularly if it’s about the future’. Few would argue with him, however, here we go… What will be the big themes in 2026 when it comes to cash and payments? Herewith an eclectic mix of suggestions.