A recent working paper entitled ‘Institutional Hostility to Cash and COVID-19’ by economists Doris Neuberger of Germany’s University of Rostock and Eduardo Beretta from the Swiss Institute of Economics examines how the pandemic has boosted commercial incentives and government policies to nudge consumers away from cash.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) monitors payments closely. During 2020 there were some interesting variations that HKMA will track in 2021. The priority for 2021 will be to monitor and understand what is happening across a range of indicators so that HKMA can manage the appropriate supply of banknotes.

LINK, the UK’s main cash machine operator, reported a 37% drop in the number of ATM cash withdrawals in 2020, a significant fall. But that is still £1.6 billion withdrawn each week - £1,500 for each adult. With nearly 8% fewer free-to-use ATMs and nearly 18% fewer pay-to-use machines, these figures are even more impressive. John Howells, CEO of LINK, the UK’s largest cash machine network, made the point that ‘the sharp decline in ATM use brings significant problems (the) drop in transactions places enormous strain on the cash infrastructure’.

Payments in their many guises are essential to the way we all live our lives, to buy bread and milk, to heat or homes and to do many other things. Around the world the majority of people take payments for granted and are able to choose the payment option that suits their needs for the particular transaction. However, many people don’t have this choice and have to rely on a single payment method, and this is very often cash.

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) received 65 responses to its latest Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) survey of which 21 were from Advanced Economies (AE) and 44 from Emerging Market/Developing Economies (EMDE). The results are published in BIS Papers 114, authored by Codruta Boar and Andreas Wehrli.

The last year has accelerated a number of payment trends, with the cash ‘paradox’ to the fore (cash in circulation up, cash transactions down). The Future of Cash conference laid out and explained the growing pressure on cash but also gave good data, examples and food for thought about opportunities for the future.

Mastercard has announced that the interchange fee on products bought online in the EU by British card holders will increase from 0.3% to 1.5%. Debit card fees will increase from 0.2% to 1.15%. This fee increase is justified because now the UK is no longer part of the EU, fees will be charged at the ‘inter-regional’ fee level rather than ‘intra-regional’ fee level.

January’s edition of Cash & Payment News™ covered NCR’s bid for Cardtronics. NCR – which describes itself as ‘a technology provider for the financial, retail and hospitality industries’ – has now announced that it has entered into a definitive acquisition agreement to buy the company, paying $39 per share, valuing Cardtronics at $2.5 billion. NCR justifies this in its statement as accelerating its shift to ‘NCR-as-a-Service’ strategy, moving its mix of revenues across its business more to software, services and recurring revenue.

The CBDC Conference, 3-5 October 2021, will go ahead in Frankfurt, although the organiser is remaining flexible to put it online if need be. Registration comes with a ‘COVID-19 guarantee’ so that people can be confident about committing to the event.

In IMF Working Paper 2020 255, entitled ‘Dirty Money: Does the Risk of Infectious Disease Lower Demand for Cash?’, its author Serhan Cevik – a senior economist with the IMF – looked at data from 133 countries between 1995 and 2017 to understand how people react to a rise in infectious diseases. Against his initial study he then ran a further five subsets of data to test his findings. After controlling for macroeconomic, financial and technological factors, the data was clear that a rise in infectious disease reduces the demand for physical cash.

Relative to its population, India has few ATMs – 22 per 100,000 people, according to the World Bank, compared with 81 in China. It also has one of the lowest ratios of ATM cash withdrawals relative to cash in circulation, according to a June 2019 RBI report, 'Benchmarking India's Payment Systems'.

The European Central Bank (ECB) study, 'Foreign Demand for Euro Banknotes', set out to identify the demand drivers for euro banknotes and to estimate the share of euro banknotes in circulation outside of the euro area.

Digital currency covers more than Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), it extends to all the digital solutions from Bitcoin to Diem. Digital currencies store balances in anonymous electronic addresses.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are much talked about. The IMF has published a detailed paper – ‘Legal Aspects of Central Bank Digital Currency: Central Bank and Monetary Law Considerations’ – which explains the legal position of CBDCs and has investigated the position of 171 IMF members to see which are currently able to issue a CBDC. The paper will help central banks think through this element of their CBDC preparations.

The Dutch National Bank (DNB) studied how an external shock, the COVID-19 pandemic, affected payments in the Netherlands, using an extensive payment diary that ran from January 2018 to October 2020.

This is the title of a new Cash Essentials paper. The paper considers the role cash plays in economic and social life, the challenges it faces and how innovation is improving the efficiency of the cash cycle. The paper includes the line, ‘the capacity for cash to change will be integral to its continuing success’, and it goes on to explore what the future holds.

In December RBR ran an online conference for Self-Service Banking Europe. There is much in the news about attacks on ATMs and this was one of the areas of interest in the conference. Paul Nicholls from Oberthur Cash Protection, Spencer Marshall from HID Global and Duane Campbell from Tesco discussed what they are doing in this area.

Thus said Ralph Wintergerst, CEO of Giesecke + Devrient (G+D), to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper before Christmas. G+D has invested significantly in this area to position itself for the future and to support its worldwide relationships with central banks. It is confident that cash will remain a core payment instrument but sees a future shift to Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Bantas is a Turkish based cash in transit (CIT) joint venture between three Turkish commercial banks. With about 1,600 staff, it looks after 48 cash centres, servicing 9,000 ATMs, 2,700 bank branches and 3,300 shops using 425 armoured trucks.

In the UK a company called BitcoinPoint has acted to make owning and using bitcoins easier. They are collaborating with the independent ATM operator Cashzone, who run 16,000 ATMs across the UK.