12 editions of Cash & Payment News™, 12 weeks of Digital Currency News™. What have we learnt? What has changed?

David Fagleman, of the consultancy Enryo, has recently presented and written about cash in circulation (CIC). He makes the case that CIC data provided by central banks is unhelpful because it overstates the case for cash usage and creates confusion about what is actually happening.

Philip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), spoke recently at a conference about the future of payments in Australia. He said that the direction of change was ‘pretty clear’.

At OMFIF’s European payments and digital assets conference CBDCs were on the agenda. Wholesale CBDCs are more familiar ground for central banks since they can be regarded as exploiting a technological opportunity rather than a major structural change.

OMFIF’s Digital Monetary Institute has worked with Giesecke + Devrient (G+D) to issue a paper ‘Consumer Attitudes to CBDC: considerations for policy makers’. The paper includes an introduction to CBDCs and an overview of the rationale for CBDCs, the work being done around the world and the challenges being addressed.

The latest Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub has been opened by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, joining Hong Kong, London, Singapore and Switzerland.

Four recent stories about digital payment crime highlight the changing profile of financial crime from payment cards to cryptocurrencies.

NatWest is committed to shaping and accelerating the UK’s cash cycle transition to a lower carbon economy. As part of this commitment in September 2020 NatWest brought together 36 organisations to discuss sustainability and the environmental impact of cash.

There is an assumption that cash is a driver of the shadow economy, but this is not proven by empirical evidence. Occasional paper 649 from the Banca d’Italia used the decision to increase the limit on cash usage as an opportunity to study what happened to cash and the shadow economy.

The Deputy Governor of the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ), Natalie Haynes, has put its work on CBDCs in the context of the government’s financial inclusion strategy. The BOJ sees a CBDC as an important tool in allowing people to access financial services and products.

On 8 November 2016 it was announced that from midnight that night the two top denominations in India would no longer be legal tender. These two denominations represented 86% of the cash in circulation. A discussion paper from Monash Business School reviews findings from new modelling of that event that investigated the impact of that action on aggregate output, welfare and the size of the shadow economy in India.

Last month we reviewed the Bank of Canada’s report on the impact of the second wave of COVID-19 on cash usage in Canada. This month we consider a report using data from four countries, the UK, the US, Spain and Mexico, as well as the EU.

With the UK recently hosting the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), companies in the UK cash cycle are thinking about what they can do to play their part.

Turkey has a high rate of inflation and household demand for cash has been increasing steadily over the past ten years. The impact of the pandemic was, initially, a decrease in demand because of the shutdowns but, after vaccinations were introduced, demand recovered very quickly.

Kantar, who deals in consumer knowledge and insights, wrote an interesting piece last year about how they can help businesses make the consumer experience better with all the benefits for customer satisfaction that come from it.

The Dutch National Bank (DNB) spoke at the recent European Cash Cycle seminar (ICCOS) about the McKinsey study commissioned to consider the cash infrastructure the Netherlands will need for the next 10 years. With cash transactions now representing 20% of all transactions, down from 32% pre-pandemic, the Netherlands is preparing for a less cash society.

David Sax, a journalist, has written a book ‘Revenge of the Analog: Real things and why they matter’. He makes an interesting case for analogue products such as banknotes. The digital world has been with us for over 20 years, and it has brought significant benefits, usually related to convenience, choice and cost.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka introduced a national QR code standard for local currency payments in July 2019. Known as LankaQR, 24 payment apps from 21 financial institutions have now been certified for use with the system. The central bank has begun a nationwide rollout of the LankaQR payment system.

Prof Dr Julia Pitter spoke at the recent Bundesbank cash symposium about the relationship between people and cash. According to Dr Pitter, a business psychologist at the Internationale Hochschule in Vienna, cash is more than a payment.

The Dutch National Bank (DNB) spoke at the recent ICCOS seminar about the McKinsey study commissioned to consider the cash infrastructure the Netherlands will need for the next 10 years. With cash transactions having recovered to 20% of transactions, down from 32% pre-pandemic, the Netherlands is preparing for a less cash society.