The Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) is working on a possible future Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and is looking to have its Real Digital ready for 2024.

At the Banknote & Currency Conference last month, Swiss substrate manufacturer Landqart revealed useful new research it has been carrying out on how to dispose of banknotes at the end of their life in an environmentally sound way.

The Digital Currency Conference (DCC) took place in person immediately after the Banknote & Currency Conference in February. The agenda raced through a wide range of topics, including quantum computing, achieving privacy with CBDCs, the Digital Dollar Project, and digital currencies.

In many countries the COVID-19 pandemic has seen cash in circulation reach record levels, yet, with diminished economic activity and a push towards ‘contactless’ payments, transactional cash use has continued to decline.

In Denmark cash may only be used in 12% of transactions, but one in four person-to-person transactions are made in cash and one in three Danes hold cash at home as a reserve. How much people hold has also increased.

The Deputy Governor of the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) has said it is on track to launch its CBDC in the first quarter of 2022, having completed the pilot in December 2021. At the moment, it is working to increase the number of commercial banks capable and ready to open accounts for CBDC users.

In 2020 consumers made 15.5 billion debit card payments in the UK. Mastercard has just said that over half of the world’s in person payments are now made using contactless technology.

Money has a public and a private role touch on financial obligations, authority and credit. But what happens when bank accounts, credit and debit cards and even cash are disrupted by war?

A new IMF paper concludes that the main influence on the demand for cash, and why demand is falling, seems to lie in the demand preferences of changing population structures. If CBDCs are issued, the demand for cash may continue to fall, but the demand for card usage may fall by even more.

A recent post highlighted how misleading the constant stream of headlines about a cashless society is. Going cashless makes for wonderfully shocking, attention-grabbing headlines.

In 2020 Apple bought Mobeewave, a start-up working to enable contactless payments using smart phones. Bloomberg has reported that Apple will allow small businesses to use iPhones to accept payments ‘in the coming months’.

China has been working hard to get its e-CNY ready in the run up to the Beijing winter Olympics with the aim of using the games to test its CBDC. The e-CNY could be used by visitors to China as well as the local population.

A recent webinar organised by Enryo, an independent consultancy, invited four experts to consider digital inclusion. Speakers addressed how to overcome the very real problem of proving identity and what needs to be done to accelerate digital inclusion.

In countries where less cash is already underway, there is an underlying assumption that it is only a matter of time before cash will reach a tipping point that makes digital payments a requirement. The unstated assumption is that cash will end, and that digital is the future. There is an urgency, therefore, to make digital payments work.

The Beijing Winter Olympics has seen a third payment option be used at an Olympic Games for the first time since 1986 (when Visa got became the exclusive payment service provider alongside cash).

A recent post highlighted how misleading the constant stream of headlines about a cashless society is. Going cashless makes for wonderfully shocking, attention-grabbing headlines.

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) conducted a survey of 2,000 companies in the summer of 2021, representative of every industrial sector and region of Switzerland.

For the first time in two centuries, since the establishment of central banks began, the definition of money is being reviewed. In that context Paul Wilson’s book – ‘Shades of Sovereignty: Money and the Making of the State’ – is a useful read.

Cash Essentials recently ran the first in a series of ‘Cash Talks’ looking at access to cash with reports from AGE Platform Europe, the European Retail Payment Board (ERPB), the Dutch National Bank (DNB) and LINK.

A new agreement has been signed between the UK’s Post Office and 30 banks and building societies to allow customers to continue to access basic banking services in post offices.