On 20 October the UK House of Commons had a debate about access to cash for nearly 90 minutes. 25 MPs spoke across every part of England, Scotland and Wales, including the Economic Secretary to the Treasury.

The Economist’s 1843 magazine recently published an article, ‘The Mystery of the Missing £50 Billion’. It tells the story of a young lady caught at Heathrow with five suitcases containing nearly £2 million in banknotes.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the ProShares Bitcoin futures Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) application, the first cryptocurrency the US financial markets regulator has approved.

Whether CBDCs are designed as token- or account-based, regulations such as those governing money laundering and the funding of terrorism mean total anonymity/privacy is not possible. Given that while privacy is highly valued in principle, the public take little to no action to safeguard their privacy in practice, is it so important?

One-time passwords (OTP) are a central part of payment security. It is a concern, therefore, to read about hackers hijacking OTPs sent via SMS by Singapore banks to their customers, resulting in fraudulent credit card transaction worth S$500,000, as recently reported by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Quick Response (QR) codes, tiny black-and-white squares, can be read at ten times the speed of traditional bar codes; hence they were called ‘Quick Response’ codes or QR codes for short. They are two-dimensional black and white barcodes that can reveal a URL (web address) or other information with a scanning device.

The Bank of Canada (BOC) has a Currency Inventory Management Strategy (IMS) based on its high-speed sorters that capture the image of every banknote, including the serial number, along with the date the banknote was created, shipped from the central bank’s distribution sites and returned to them.

In place of the annual in-person Future of Cash Conference™, a series of virtual events have been staged. The most recent was an Asia Pacific-focused two-day virtual conference held across four themed sessions in July.

The Central Bank Payments conference has had to become virtual and will now take place as four separate half day events. These will be held on 8, 15, 22 and 29 November.

CashEssentials – the cash and payments think tank – has launched the CashTech Forum to promote innovation and technology, thereby ensuring a sustainable and future-proof cash ecosystem.

15 organisations across the entire cash cycle have contributed 61 separate case studies illustrating what they have done to reduce their environmental impact for a white paper which will be ready for the UN Climate Change conference (COP 26) starting 1 November. A further five organisations will be providing more examples.

The International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) held its Excellence in Currency awards ceremony this month, the topic of which was 'Best Currency Initiatives Implemented in Response to The Covid-19 Pandemic’.

The subject of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) has moved from ‘vague awareness’ in around 2016 to ‘big news’ today. To help people keep up, the publishers of Cash & Payment News™ (CPN) have decided to start publishing a weekly newsletter dedicated to CBDCs.

Project Dunbar involves the central banks of Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and Australia. The project, initiated by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), is to test the use of CBDCs for international settlement.

GSMA has published the number of mobile money accounts in 2020 in different regions, and how many of them are active. The paradox is why are only 25% of registered accounts overall actually active?

In July Germany experienced severe flooding in some regions, as high as seven metres in the town of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler for example. It also resulted in significant quantities of banknotes stored in homes and businesses being damaged by flood water contaminated with mud, sewage and oil.

Benoît Cœuré, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub, recently spoke at The Eurofi Financial Forum. The focus of his speech was that central banks need to move faster on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), with the private sector already on the move.

Ross MacDiarmid, Executive Director of the Mint Directors Conference (MDC), hosted Professor Pasquale Sgro, Professor Franz Seitz and Guillaume Lepecq to consider the question in the title, under the banner of ‘no such thing as a free lunch’.

David Birch, the author, adviser and investor in digital financial services, has recently posted an article on Linkedin, ‘Why would anyone think it is a good idea?’. There is the argument is that shop keepers could always have accepted Bitcoin, but now they have to.

The Post Office in the UK is playing an increasing important role in providing cash services to communities. It now provides cash services for over 30 banks and building societies as part of a Banking Framework. Customers can withdraw or deposit cash at any of the 11,500 Post Office branches.