Programme

Monday 24 June

13:30 – 17:00: Cash Cycle Recycling and Recirculation Workshop

This workshop, which is open to all, will consider the key activities, principles and options open to a central bank to ensure cash recycling and recirculation delivers fit and genuine banknotes and coins for the public.

If cash can be recycled and reused at, or close to, the point of sale, then that cash can be transported less and its velocity in circulation can increase, delivering significant environmental and cost benefits to all. The introduction of machines capable of fitness checking and authenticating banknotes, and even counting equipment, often has this capability now, giving those at the point of sale the ability to maintain standards to a consistent and defined level. But how can this be assured?

At the same time circulation models are changing. Better data and communications are allowing new business models, such as Smartsafes that enable fewer pick ups. This changes risk profiles and cash holdings. Higher circulation velocity can also mean banknotes experience more wear. Do specifications need to be amended to ensure banknotes are as durable as they can be?
The spectrum of cash management models ranges from central banks fitness checking and authenticating all banknotes returned from circulation through to the complete outsourcing of these activities with, at most, sampling of returned unfit banknotes before destruction. But with cash returning less frequently to cash centres where high speed sorters, with their many detector system are used, data on cash holdings is further removed from what is actually circulating, more unfit notes circulate and counterfeit reports are delayed.

No one economy is the same. Culture, economic behaviour, banking systems and flows, cash and commercial infrastructure, rules and regulations, specifications etc. are all different. However, there are activities that have to happen – fitness checking, authentication, data gathering, accounting etc. – and principles that apply.

This workshop will also look at elements that are directly under the central banks control, such as the specification of notes and coins, denominational structures, cash distribution models etc.

It will then examine a range of different models from totally in-house to completely decentralised cash systems. In the context of developing business models, it will look at a number of case studies of how different central banks run their cash cycles. It will also consider the implications of these rules on commercial banks, cash management companies, ATM operators, cash in transit companies and retailers.

The session will also touch on environmental factors beyond the movement of cash, to consider single-use plastics, security seals, containers, other packaging materials, recycling data gathering, and more. These are areas where central banks often regulate and so, therefore, have direct control of their environmental impact.

This will be an interactive session with a range of speakers. Given every country will have different experiences, this is a useful and interesting opportunity to share experience.

This workshop is free for all delegates