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The First CashTech Innovation Awards

Categories : Cash is available to all users, Innovation contributes to the efficiency of cash
September 22, 2022
Tags : Access to cash, Cash Deposit, CashTech, Innovation
Clip Money, DBS Bank, Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions, and Sonect were the first recipients of the CashTech Innovation Awards, presented by CashEssentials at the Future of Cash Conference in September.
Guillaume Lepecq

Chair, CashEssentials

This post is also available in: Spanish

CashTech is the encounter between cash and technology. It brings together companies that leverage software and modern communications technology to improve cash services – including access for consumers and businesses, facilitating the acceptance of cash by retailers across all channels, and enhancing cash’s overall efficiency, resilience and sustainability.

As banks reduce their cash infrastructure (branches, ATMs and cash centres) in most advanced economies, CashTech has moved quickly to fill the gap and complement traditional channels for the smooth distribution and circulation of cash. Other innovators are enabling consumers to pay in cash for their online shopping.

The CashTech Innovation Awards celebrate the tremendous advances in harnessing digital technology to ensure an accessible, reliable and sustainable future for cash.

Best CashTech Award

The Best CashTech Award was jointly presented to DBS Bank and Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions.

Singapore-based DBS Bank deployed pop-up ATMs to distribute new banknotes to discourage customers from overcrowding bank branches during the pandemic. New notes are famous during the Lunar New Year celebrations amongst the Chinese – who form a 70% majority of Singapore’s population. The banknotes, which symbolise ‘new wealth’ and prosperity, are placed into red packets and given to families and friends.

DBS is also the first bank in Singapore to integrate coin and cash deposits in a single transaction, allowing customers to complete their tasks at a quicker pace. The lack of facilities to deposit coins presents a significant barrier to an efficient cash cycle. The DBS solution is its ‘Bank-in-a-Box’ terminal, which features an ATM with a coin sidecar and can handle mass market and corporate deposit coin volumes and integrate them into a single deposit channel.

DBS pop-up ATMs dispense new notes during the Lunar New Year.

Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions is a manufacturer of specialised high-security printing machines. It has developed ValiCash™, the first application to authenticate banknotes via mobile phone, bridging the physical and digital worlds. The application shows banknotes based on a structural analysis of the Intaglio print and, more generally, on specific optical characteristics of high-security printing processes, including OVMI (Optical Variable Magnetic Inks) elements and holograms. The significance of ValiCash in terms of CashTech is that it enables banknotes that are being recirculated via retailers or other non-bank operations to be authenticated without going through an ATM recycling or banknote processor device as typically installed in bank branches or cash centres.

The ValiCash™ app helps authenticate banknotes.

Best CashTech Innovator

The Best CashTech Innovator was presented to Sonect. The Swiss-based company was launched in 2016 and has developed a virtual ATM network connecting consumers who want to withdraw cash with merchants who wish to deposit cash. The app-based solution creates value for all parties in the cash cycle: consumers benefit from convenient and secure access to money; retailers see their cost of handling cash reduced and their foot-traffic increased; banks reduce their operational costs. Sonect has a network of 2,300 locations in Switzerland and is available at all major Swiss banks. It is now extending its operations to the UK and Italy and received its first licence to operate in Mexico last month.

Sonect converts shops into virtual ATMs.

Best CashTech Start-Up

Clip Money won the Best CashTech Start-Up Award. The North American company has combined a mobile app with a cloud-based transaction platform, securely connected cash deposit devices and management software to deliver an end-to-end deposit solution to businesses, whoever they bank with, with the universal deposit devices available in convenient locations 24/7 such as shopping malls. As the footprint of bank branches reduces, this service is helpful both to businesses in making available deposit facilities in a convenient locations such as shopping malls and banks in helping them to reduce costs, manual processes and in-person transaction processing.

Clip Money enables businesses to deposit cash 24/7 in convenient locations.

The diversity of the winners of the first CashTech Innovation Awards demonstrates the wealth of innovation that is taking place within the cash cycle. [CashTech] contributes to make the cash cycle shorter, more efficient, and more sustainable. It brings cash closer to the people for whom access to cash is a fundamental right. — Guillaume Lepecq, Chairman  of CashEssentials.

This post is also available in: Spanish

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