Mastercard’s Asia-Pacific lead for blockchain and digital assets has spoken about CBDCs in the region. He argues that consumers are so comfortable with existing payment options that a CBDC is not justified.

If a general can choose the battlefield, they can shape what happens next in the fight that follows. At the Future of Cash conference Brett Scott, the author, explained how the digital leaders have created and driven the story that digital is good and analogue is bad.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) roared into the public consciousness in 2023. Its widespread use and, more importantly, its potential have become visible to all, not just the small specialist user community that has been working on it for years. Clearly, AI is of great interest to central banks from the policy makers through the cash issue department.

A paper published by the Munich Personal RePEc Archive has carried out secondary research on Africa’s adoption of CBDCs.

It is unusual for a commercial bank to describe its cash strategy, and so it was particularly good to hear NatWest, one of the UK’s big four high street banks, do this at the Future of Cash conference in Istanbul.

Japan has recently experienced a system failure that affected credit card payments at transportation hubs and shops.

One thought that came from the Future of Cash conference was the need to understand digital payments more. A recent conference paper from Vietnam does just that as it examines why people in the developing world move to digital payments by studying the uptake of mobile money services in Vietnam.

The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published a blog which highlights its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Virtual Handbook. It draws attention to the explosion of interest in CBDCs and the need to design them appropriately.

Uniquely amongst payment options, cash offers people payment privacy. A key part of the debate about Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) is about the extent to which a CBDC can mimic the privacy achieved by cash. A new Bank for International Settlements (BIS) working paper considers designing CBDCs for privacy protection and data governance1.

For countries experiencing ‘less cash’, it is becoming normal to measure the distance people must travel to access cash from an ATM, or in Canada’s case and automated banking machine (ABM), or branch of a financial institution. The Bank of Canada has released a paper describing its travel- based metric and the results.

The Future of Cash conference in Istanbul, which took place 6-8 November, saw some big conversations about cash today and its future. The mood was more upbeat than in recent years as transactional demand for cash has largely rebounded from the lows of the pandemic and the access to cash agenda has gathered pace in countries facing the reality of less cash.

A new paper has looked at the cash in circulation in 17 economies between 2001 and 20221.

Geldmaat runs the ATM network for the Netherland’s largest banks. This utility approach to ATM provision has strict service level agreements. Despite this the media in the Netherlands has reported that 5% of ATMs were broken at some point in September.

The Future of Cash conference was one of those rare opportunities to step back and think. A series of experts presented data, research and conclusions from the real world about cash and its role in the payment hierarchy.

Bancomat AB was registered in 1968 in Sweden, and it is the second oldest ATM operator in the world. It was incorporated in 2010 and is owned by Danske bank, Nordea, Handelsbanken, SEB, Swedbank and some savings banks.

Mastercard’s CFO, speaking recently at a UBS conference, has raised issues with India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI) system. Describing it as ‘fantastic at many levels’, he also said it was an ‘incredibly painful experience’ for its ecosystem participants.

The International Mint Industry Association (IMIA) has issued a position paper on the European Commission’s (EC) draft regulations on the legal tender of euro banknotes and coins. The paper also refers to the EC’s proposals about a possible digital euro. Although supportive of the initiative, the IMIA highlights a number of concerns.

The Emerging Market and Europe ATM and Cash Summit in Dublin focused on the future role of ATMs in a changing world. In addition to the keynote speech by the Dutch National Bank, supported by a Geldmaat presentation, Bancomat from Sweden, LINK from the UK and the ECB also covered the changing role of cash.

The Reserve Bank of Atlanta has made some observations about the Merchant Risk Council’s 2023 Global Ecommerce Payments and Fraud Report.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has used decentralised finance (DeFi) technology concepts on a public blockchain to trade and settle hypothetical euro, Swiss franc and Singapore dollar wholesale CBDCs across borders between simulated financial institutions.