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’.

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.

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.

On 15 October 2021 the UK raises its contactless limit to £100 from £45. It also raises the cumulative transaction limit to £300 before a PIN must be entered. This increase means the UK now has the highest contactless limit in Europe and the seventh highest in the world.

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.

This paper opens asking three questions from a legal perspective; Do central banks (CBs) have the authority to issue digital currency? Can Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) be real ‘currency’? Should digital currency be legal tender?

In April 2020 Harro Boven and Peter Wieters published a Dutch National Bank (DNB) Occasional Study on the objectives, pre-conditions and design choices for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Harro wrote an abridged version that was used in Payers December publication about CBDCs which is summarised here.

This year the Bank of Canada has published 9 staff analytical notes and staff working papers discussing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). As the most recent paper says, as a contingency the Bank of Canada is looking to build its capability to issue a cash-like retail denominated CBDC.

On 12th October the European Central Bank (ECB) opened a public consultation on the creation of a Digital Euro, a Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). The logic is that the increased usage of digital payments may mean that a Digital Euro is needed to safeguard citizens.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has called for a ‘digital Bretton Woods’ to set standards for digital currency and trade systems. Its call comes in the context of today’s digital platforms that handle more than just finance, but trade, tax and audits, and it does this across borders.

Peterson K Ozili has written about financial inclusion and why it is harder than it looks. Many of the barriers are within the control of governments to remove by investment and subsidies. Others, the cultural, social and income barriers are a much more significant challenge.

There have been a number of articles this year about financial products targeting children with the aim of teaching them to save, spend and think about money ready for when they are adults.

Rwanda is a relatively small land-locked African country in the Great Rift Valley bordering Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the most densely populated mainland African country with a young, mainly rural population numbering 12.6 million.

The Economist Intelligence Unit has issued a paper, ‘Going Digital. Payments in the Post-Covid World’. It is interesting both for what it says and how it says it.

As an initial member of the European Retail Payment Board (ERPB) working group, the European Security and Transport Association (ESTA), supported by other organisations, sought to foster debate on a number of issues relevant to ‘obstacles to cash acceptance’, a topic being investigated by the ERPB and about which it had issued a questionnaire.

Following the Digital Monetary Institute’s (DMI) CBDC conference in April this year and the announcement of ‘The CBDC Conference’ 3-6 October 2021, there is now a rush to hold CBDC dedicated events.

aRussia’s second largest bank, VTB, has been working on tools to identify the optimum location for bank branches and ATMs. It has used a wide range of parameters, over 5,000, to calculate how to reach the most customers and generate the most sales from a new location.

CSMPI’s latest Insight magazine reports on card fee changes in 2021 around the world. It suggests that each tweak in the fees may appear small but, overall, the additional revenue is likely to be over $1.1 billion in the US alone.

The Bank of Korea is investigating adjustments needed in the payment system if CBDCs are launched. The Kakao consortium and two tech affiliates of the Samsung Group are to run a pilot programme for issuing and distributing CBDCs and looking at transferring money and remittances between countries.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has gone public encouraging people to use coins and to return them into the cash cycle. After the coin hiatus last year, which saw the formation of the Coin Taskforce and limits on the issue of coins to retailers and institutions, the situation had eased with the limits lifted and normal service resuming.