As part of his satirical take on wealth and power, Mark Twain reputedly coined the idiom, ‘Money Talks’. But, he asked, if it does, do we know what it’s saying?’ To which I would add, ‘… and in what language?’ This article argues that banknotes in particular not only speak several ‘semiotic’ languages – of national identity and technological sophistication, for example – but also speak the languages of ‘disaster management’ and ‘public health’. But either we’re not listening or we can’t understand the messages. And because of this, we’re failing to take advantage of what they could say in the inevitable event of another major outbreak of disease.
As with so much about risk communications during public health emergencies, avoiding unnecessary death and suffering is not just about evidence-bases and science, but about what people believe and consequently how they behave. Misinformation has to be countered robustly, coherently and continually.
Surprisingly, owing to their unparalleled reach and trustworthiness, contemporary banknotes can play a key role in changing risk perceptions, not just about their own role in spreading communicable diseases, but as an integrated component of any wider disaster management or health security strategy.
Cash got a bad rap during the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization’s fumbled advice over the role played by banknotes as a vector (fomite) for disease transmission had major and long-lasting negative repercussions, not just for the cash and cash management industries, but for society at large. Misplaced health concerns about cash being ‘dirty and unhygienic’ discouraged physical handling, resulting in businesses and consumers around the world shifting wholesale to online digital payments. In the UK, Bank of England data showed that cash use declined by about 60% for transactional purposes within weeks and never fully recovered.
More recently, it has become clear that crises of different types have forced governments to confront the fragility of digital-only payments and re-assess their policies about maintaining the public’s access to cash.
Cash is being reclassified as a result, not as an outdated relic from a bygone era but as a critical national infrastructure.
From constitutional protections in Europe to emergency preparedness planning in disaster-prone countries, cash is moving back to the centre of government policy making.
In other words, despite rapid growth in digital payments, physical currency remains central to our social, political, and economic lives, especially in times of disaster. Cash is not going away.
With this in mind, national disaster management authorities should re-assess the role physical currency can play in emergency settings, not just in terms of it being a key disaster preparedness and response mechanism but in its potential for informing the public about the risks they face, and the preventive actions they can take. This need not be just about disease transmission but about any aspect of the readiness-response-recovery disaster cycle.
In high-income economies, the discourse surrounding money often focuses on convenience, mobile wallets, real-time payments systems, and card penetration. In contrast, many low-income countries retain a predominantly cash-based transactional ecosystem in the face of unreliable connectivity, limited financial inclusion, cultural trust in tangible value, and the higher transaction costs of digital payments.
Banknotes in these environments experience higher circulation intensity. They pass more frequently from hand to hand, are folded, soiled, and exposed to humidity, heat, dust, and mechanical abrasion. In tropical and monsoon climates, degradation accelerates further. Traditional cotton-based banknotes containing high loads of pathogenic bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other living micro-organisms can quickly become unfit for circulation. These notes, in short, become dirty health hazards.
Contemporary banknotes, on the other hand, contribute to health protection through a combination of materials science, design choices, and embedded technologies that reduce disease transmission and support public health risk communications. Banknotes are not a driver of disease transmission compared with respiratory or physical contact pathways but can reduce the risk of disease transmission both actively and passively, first by switching to polymer substrates and incorporating antimicrobials, and then by using design features in support of phone-based augmented reality public health messaging.
Polymer notes are cleaner than cotton-paper or hybrid alternatives, due to physical and chemical properties inherent to polymer. According to Harper Adams university, their smooth, non-porous, surface prevents absorption of moisture, oils, and organic matter, which reduces the potential for pathogenic growth. Bacteria found on human hands are less capable of sticking to plastic notes and die off faster.
Polymer notes also withstand alcohol-based cleaners, mild detergents, and heat better than paper notes, further reducing opportunities for cross-contamination, especially in environments where cash is handled at scale, for example at ATMs, in banks, and in cash centres. Polymer notes dry quickly after handling or exposure to humidity, reducing survival time for microbes and last up to six times longer than cotton-paper equivalents, reducing the frequency of heavily soiled notes in circulation.
Although they are no more ‘dangerous’ than doorknobs or mobile phones when it comes to disease transmission, modern banknotes – especially polymer notes – can actually reduce the opportunity for disease transmission by incorporating non-toxic anti-microbial compounds into substrates, inks and varnishes which inhibit bacterial growth and limit viral transmissibility.
Application of antimicrobial agents either during substrate production or as varnishes after printing not only helps control the transmission of disease, but provides confidence that the issuing authority is taking the public’s health security seriously. Anti-microbial treatments therefore become a discreet but meaningful component of any post-disaster health protection strategy.
Money has always been a medium of communication. The medium, both literally and metaphorically, is the message when it comes to cash, with portraits of leaders, national heroes, and depictions of cultural heritage being employed symbolically to express national identity. New ‘augmented reality’ (AR) technologies can now expand that communications function dramatically by ‘talking’ directly to consumers.
AR-enabled banknotes insert scannable, micro-printed optical patterns into the design that trigger digital overlays on smartphone screens. When viewed through an AR interface, the note can display animations, highlight key messages, or provide links to related interactive modules. Download the ‘Swiss Banknotes’ app from the Swiss National Bank and then scan the picture below to see the animation effect for yourself 1.
After a disaster, access to verified and trustworthy information is essential.
Yet, in the dynamic and rapidly changing circumstances that follow such events, misinformation tends to spread quickly.
Because banknotes are accessible to virtually everyone, AR content can counter this by providing relevant and timely audio-visual advice. Guidance is linked to official sources and can be updated by the relevant authorities at any time. AR-enabled banknotes can deliver evacuation maps, hazard warnings, aid-distribution guidance and public health messaging, all of which reduces population vulnerability. Crucially, it can do all this in locally relevant languages.
In this sense, the banknote is transformed from a simple store of value to a mobile-accessible micro-portal of state communication with unparalleled distribution and reach. By integrating this technology into nation-wide risk communications strategies, AR-enabled banknotes become uniquely powerful crisis-communication channels in their own right.
These three technologies – polymer substrates, anti-microbial agents, and AR interfaces – have the potential to play an active role in changing public perceptions around disease transmission and inform the public about wider response and recovery measures to take. As such, they have the potential to re-position contemporary money as a critical component of a country’s disaster risk reduction and health security strategy.
Cash can do more than facilitate transactions; it can build disaster resilience, strengthen health security, support market functionality, and build confidence by amplifying and extending the reach of complex information from trusted sources.
The implications are far-reaching for politicians, central bankers, the cash industry and the public alike in terms of decreased persistence of bacteria and viruses on note surfaces, lower incidental transmission during outbreaks, and increased public confidence in handling cash when fear of contagion is high.
Far from being sidelined by digital payments, the banknote is being quietly but decisively reinvented as a durable, hygienic, and interactive platform for the promotion of economic and social stability in times of crisis. It’s time to let anti-microbial, AR-enabled banknotes do the talking.
James Shepherd-Barron is a disaster management consultant and cash anthropologist. This article is an abridged excerpt from his forthcoming book, ‘CASH – and the Meaning of Money.’
1 - That this works from a printed photograph is evidence that Augmented Reality technol-ogy in its current form cannot yet be used as an anti-counterfeit security feature.
