A new paper from the SUERF, the European Money and Finance Forum, explains that the rising systemic importance of Non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), is sharply increasing the need for central banks to intervene to stabilise financial systems as banks become less able to provide liquidity.

UK Finance recently published its Annual Fraud Report. It describes in detail what is happening and changes in fraud. Although it does not say how those costs are then passed on to the consumer, it will undoubtedly be the consumer who ultimately pays. Understanding fraud is, therefore, important.

Pakistan’s 2025-2026 federal budget marks a decisive policy pivot toward cultivating a digitally empowered, future-oriented financial landscape.

Speaking in Kyiv at the National Bank of Ukraine, the Governor of the Bank of England (BoE) spoke about the role of central banks in the context of changing market structures and events. His speech throws an interesting light on recent developments in the US and Europe in this area.

Finally, the US Senate has passed legislation about stablecoins after a number of years trying.

The CB+DC Conference 2025 takes place from 9-11 September in Nassau, in collaboration with the Central Bank of The Bahamas.

May’s edition of Cash & Payment News™ reported on a recent Bank of Canada staff paper updating a previous study on access to cash in Canada. Hot on its heels is a new paper that moves the topic forward.

A survey of UK consumers by LHV Bank finds growing frustration with both traditional and digital banks.

The Payment Choice Coalition (PCC) in the US is an initiative launched in July 2024 by a high-level group of executives from companies active in the cash cycle: Brinks, Davis Bancorp, Fifth Third Bank, G+D, Loomis, and Lowers Risk Group. It has since expanded to include NCR Atleos, Diebold Nixdorf, Western Union, Controltek, and Crane Payment Innovations.

If you pay for something with a banknote the transaction involves you and the merchant. With the arrival of cheques banks became involved. The credit and debit card required the four pillar model that remains the basic platform for most digital payments, involving four parties (issuer bank, acquirer bank, merchant and cardholder. This four pillar model has at least six steps between the card being tendered and the transaction being completed.

Amnon Samid is a co-founder and leader of the interdisciplinary BitMint team that is working on Quantum-Resistant solutions for data, communication and money, including tokenisation, crypto, CBDC, stablecoins, lending, and any other value transfer and protect. He managed the first ever CBDC project that passed banking stress tests.

This year a Cash Sustainability workshop is being run alongside the High Security Printing (HSP) conference in Latin America. It makes sense, therefore, that a new Environmental Award is being announced at the conference, even though the award is open to any organisation anywhere.

The latest US survey and diary of consumer payment choice compared October 2023 with October 2024.

Banco Central do Brasil launched Pix, its real-time payment (RTP) system, in November 2020. Pix has a sophisticated technological infrastructure that was developed and is operated, managed and regulated by the central bank.

The Nordic countries – Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Estonia – are reacting to risks to the payment system by working together on offline payments.

Sveriges Riksbank (Riksbank) works to ensure that payments in Sweden are safe, efficient, and accessible. They need to function in peacetime, crisis, and states of heightened alert. The Riksbank publishes a payments report most years, although 2023 was an exception. The latest report describes and analyses developments in the payments market over the past year.

In late February, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) gave evidence to the Economics Committee of the Australian Parliament. At the time, press reports interpreted her remarks as suggesting cash will be gone in ten years. Matt Sykes, of CPT group, has published his thoughts on the actual state of cash in Australia based on available data.

An article by David Birch has argued that cash should not be regarded as the catastrophe solution. Cash is a solution, but only for very short time frames. What is needed is the means for person-to-person (or actually, device-to-device) payments that work in the absence of mobile networks, electricity and clearing systems. For example, a device with the necessary secure microchip, or a bank smart card, allows you to pay in shops, or send money to a friend. This is how the Chinese digital currency works.

On 28 April, Spain, Portugal, and parts of France experienced a widespread electrical outage that plunged about 55 million people into a pre-electric age. The blackout had significant impacts on digital payments and cash demand, highlighting the vulnerabilities of modern payment systems during infrastructure failures.

In 2023, the Bank of Canada developed a travel-based measure of cash access. This quantified how far Canadians needed to travel to their nearest Automatic Banknote Machine (ABM) or financial institution (FI) branch. This study has been updated with the latest available data, 2023, and the opportunity has been taken to improve the data quality of the ABM data provided by Mastercard, such as duplicate records, missing ABMs and issues with ABM coordinates.