Central Banks and Cash Round-Up

This month, there is no particular geographic focus for our periodic series of articles covering cash information in central bank annual reports, as we range from Europe (the ECB and Bank of England) across the Asian steppes (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia) to Korea, and then down to South Africa.

European Central Bank (ECB)

Cash in circulation: euro banknotes in circulation increased to 31.3 billion pieces in 2025, worth €1,619.5 billion, up 2.5%. The increase in euro coin circulation issued by euro area member states reached 1.8% by number year-on-year and amounted to 2.7 billion coins with a face value of €890 million.

Credit institutions returned 24.5 billion banknotes to the euro area national central banks (NCBs) in 2025, which is a slight decrease of 0.9 billion banknotes compared with 2024.