Cash is a contingency and fall-back solution

Nina Wenning, the CEO of Bankomat, the Swedish bank-owned ATM operator calls for the central bank to incentivise retailers to accept cash by subsidising the cash cycle.

The benefits of humanitarian financial assistance – what the aid world calls ‘Cash & Voucher Assistance (CVA)’ – are pretty well known: Giving people cash instead of food or other forms of in-kind commodity empowers recipients to address their own priorities, reduces opportunities for corruption, and pumps money into local economies. It is, generally speaking, a much more dignified and cost-effective way of meeting beneficiary needs.

Riksbank governor calls for stronger legal protection for cash. The Central Bank recommends to review the concept of legal tender. “If it were to be established by law that one was forced to accept cash in Sweden, more of us would probably choose to have cash in our wallets.” says Ingves.

Reductions in the ability of people to access cash and the increasing cost to business of using cash is likely to increase the risk of financial exclusion for sections of society dependent on cash if not managed. Maintaining access to cash should be part of any aid organisation’s fiduciary risk approach to cash assistance. Cash coordination groups currently active around the world should therefore work with their respective central and commercial bank partners to better understand the political economy of cash as used by their collective beneficiaries.

The use of cash fell substantially in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic with the acceleration in online shopping and contactless payments – but cash usage has bounced back as lockdown has eased. Long-term prospects for retail payments remain uncertain.

With the coronavirus pandemic moving past the six-month mark, one of the first notable side effects was a reduction in the use of physical greenbacks. The cash-out had several drivers: Most retail stores were closed or saw their operations greatly reduced, virtually all bars and restaurants that remained open could provide takeout service only, almost everyone who was able to began working from home, and online shopping from Amazon and other home-delivery options boomed.

According to the recently published Annual Report of the Reserve Bank of India, cash in circulation grew by 14.7% in value and 6.6% in volume between March 2020 and March 2019.

The IBDA and CashEssentials have been joined by other industry organisations - including ATMIA, BnEI, IACA, ICA and Reconnaissance International - to develop an initiative to support global recovery post Covid-19 by bringing together all actors in our community. They are calling this initiative, ‘HUMANIA’ but the project name will be confirmed upon launch of the initiative in September 2020.

For countries emerging from conflict like Ethiopia, digital payment systems are a tempting way to extend control over the people. Do Ethiopians want their government to have complete and absolute control over every financial transaction they make or would they prefer to retain the financial resilience, privacy, freedom from exploitation, and protection from poor governance which cash offers them?

Despite the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic, the payment system has weathered the storm; no systemic outages of core payments infrastructure have been reported. Payments systems - cash and non-cash - have proved resilient and robust and have continued to enjoy trust from the general public.

A survey shows that the majority of Spaniards view access to cash as important in times of crisis. Meanwhile the government is proposing to lower the limit on cash payments and advocate its elimination altogether.

As in other countries, Australia has seen an increase in currency demand and a decline in cash payments during the pandemic. The Reserve Bank is considering policy options to ensure competition and resilience in the payments market. This could lessen the profitability of retail payments.