Cash and Crises

Irish NGO Goal analyses ‘multi-purpose cash and voucher assistance’ and concludes that cash is more flexible, more resilient, and more cost-effective than other forms of financial support.

In Singapore, currency in circulation has grown by 9.5%, despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Food merchants prefer cash, despite the official endorsement of digital payments. Several CashTech solutions accommodate Singaporeans’ preference for cash.

Millions of dollars in aid to Lebanon are being lost in currency exchange as inflation soars out of control, but internal UN documents and interviews with officials suggest that fixing the problem faces political and logistical hurdles, and could even spark violence.

As the Covid-19 pandemic further reduces the U.K.’s ATM network, several pilots are underway to protect access to cash for consumers and small businesses.

Political exploitation, discrimination, financial exclusion and post-disaster resilience were some of the key concerns explored in a thought leadership webinar held on 18th March to discuss the implications for society of shifting to a cashless economy.

Saying there might be a problem with humanitarian cash transfers is like saying that you don’t think Baby Yoda is that cute... The problem is not with cash transfers per se, but with the financial technology we rely on to implement those transfers, and which makes possible and monetises surveillance on a scale never seen before.

Economists Gerhard Rösl and Franz Seitz analyse the impact of different crises (Y2K, GFC & Covid-19) on cash demand and observe an evident increase in global cash in circulation in times of uncertainty. They conclude that cash reduces uncertainty during a crisis and can be interpreted as a special kind of public insurance service.

We have succumbed to the inevitability of digitalisation and the associated monetisation of money, the cynical conversion of the public good called cash into its privatised digital equivalent. In the process, we are losing the social utility of cash.

Cash demonstrated its resilience in the aftermath of snowstorm Uri in Texas, amid widespread power outages, electronic payments failure, and the shutdown of financial infrastructure.

Cash Transfers are supporting Madagascar’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens during the Pandemic, but there are unintended consequences.

A year after the Covid-19 pandemic spread globally, there is more data available to determine its impact on the use of cash in U.S. retail payments. The public has not stopped using cash, but some retailers have stopped accepting it altogether, threatening the economic well-being of large, vulnerable segments of U.S. consumers who use cash as their main means of payment.

For Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, financial inclusion will be a critical part of post-Covid-19 economic recovery. He recognises that cashless “is something we are not going to get to and probably shouldn’t”.