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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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