Digital payments can feel inevitable, sweeping all before them. A range of recent news items suggest this isn’t true.

For the first time in years, cash usage has risen in the UK, and not by a small percentage. The British Retail Consortium conducts an annual Payments Survey which covers 35% of the UK’s retailers, and this is the first time since it started the survey in 2013 that it has seen an increase.

Danmarks Nationalbank has carried out an analysis of the role of cash in a low cash usage society.

A Payments Canada survey has found that 31% of Canadians use cash for day-to-day purchases, with speed (38%), wide acceptance (38%) and the ability to pay without borrowing (25%) the key motivators. Budgeting, privacy, convenience, cost of paying and security are also important.

Perhaps a minority story, but a real life example of the strange things people do with banknotes. In Uganda, there is a trend for florists to design bouquets using banknotes.

We report all too frequently on payments system failures – see the end of this article for a recent example. But it is interesting that the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has recently chosen to draw attention to the performance and reliability of Australia’s new payments platform (NPP), particularly noting the need and priority of improving the ‘resilience of Australia’s payments and market infrastructure’.

In addition to the British Retail Consortium providing detailed information on the cost of payments in the UK, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has recommended a cap on cross-border interchange fees, following its market review of the fees.

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.

The Chief Minister for Bengal has questioned the government’s focus on cashless transactions.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.