Cash Access in a Less-Cash World

In the November issue of Currency News™, we covered initiatives in Australia and the Netherlands to assess the growing trend to digital payments and what these countries are doing, or beginning to think about doing, to ensure ongoing access to cash in a less-cash world.

This month is the turn of France and Israel, representatives from the central banks of which both gave presentations at the recent Europe Cash Cycle seminar. This and the following article are summaries of those presentations.

Less cash is not a cashless society

According to Raymond de Pastor, from the Cash Department at the Banque de France (Bdf), in his presentation titled ‘Less Cash is not a Cashless Society’, cash use is declining in France. This is creating issues that need to be resolved quickly if cash is to remain as a means of payment available to all in the future The BdF, like the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), is carrying out its own review of the cash cycle in parallel with the ECB’s 10-year review. It is based on the premise that there will be less cash but not a cashless society.