The next webinar from the MDC (Mint Directors Conference) takes place on 16 September on the topic of ‘What is the Cost to Consumers and Society of Cash v the Cost of ‘Electronic’ / Digital Payments?’

Cash & Payment News™ didn’t go on holiday in August. Instead, it has focused on the environment, the importance of inclusion, a paper by ESTA on access to cash, a country profile of cash in Rwanda, a study of cash in Italy and the review of a BIS paper on CBDC privacy.

CCL Secure is cementing its leading position in polymer production for banknotes with major additions to the capabilities of its production lines. The company is investing £9.5 million to include support for its latest two innovations.

Hungary’s central bank – Magyar Nemzeti Bank – has released a series of six new commemorative coins to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the introduction of the forint.

Jens Eberhardt, Managing Director of Cashinfrapro, has written a paper – ‘Green Cash Logistics’ – which considers how modern ways of working can reduce the environmental impact of the cash cycle. This article, which appeared in sister publication Cash & Payment News™, is a summary of the paper.

In the Banknote of the Month feature in last month’s Currency News™, we covered the Central Bank of Honduras’ new 200 lempira note which, among other features, is the first in the world to incorporate a registered Galaxy® thread. In this article, Louisenthal explains the significance of this new advance in thread technology.

Mint & Print (MAP), the biennial industry conference previously run by the Banque du Liban in Beirut, is back for 2021, but this time taking place in Dubai.

With six weeks to go the CBDC Conference, which takes place online from 4-6 October, some 40 central banks have registered to attend and to listen to the 50 speakers who are confirmed in the programme.

Optical security feature provider Nanotech Security Corporation has agreed to be acquired by Meta Materials, a developer of high-performance functional materials and nanocomposites, for nearly C$91 million.

The German company ZEISER, which provides impact and non-impact serialisation solutions and services to the security printing industry, has acquired the document inspection and track and trace software solutions of Inspectron, UK.

The Central Bank of Chile is urging citizens to ferret out any spare change they may have lying around amid a national shortage of coins. In a series of recent Twitter posts, the central bank warned that ‘COVID-19 had affected the circulation of cash’ and hurt small retail vendors.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is the latest central bank planning to issue polymer notes, with a commemorative note to mark the 75th anniversary of independence in 2022, and another to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Bank in 2023.

Next month, Russian secure hologram company producer KRYPTEN will introduce the 100/50 Nobelists house note, featuring a new 3D-GRAM® CONTRUST photopolymer security patch for use on paper and polymer banknotes.

On 1 November the latest UN Climate Change meeting, COP 26, starts in Glasgow in the UK. We can expect significant press interest and focus on the event in particular, and the environment in general.

The recent meeting of the G7 (Group of Seven, an inter-governmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US) held in the UK prompted De La Rue to look at the banknotes of the participating countries, which threw up some interesting divergences in their approaches to banknote security.

The Bank of Guatemala has published the designs of its new commemorative 20 quetzales banknote and 1 quetzal coin marking the country’s bicentennial anniversary. This will be the first commemorative banknote in the Bank’s history.

The Republic of Honduras is located in Central America, bordering on many countries – to the west Guatemala, to the southwest El Salvador and to the southeast Nicaragua.

‘The past year has been an extraordinarily challenging one for the world as a whole, and The Royal Mint has been no exception’. These were the opening words in the Chairman’s Report for 2020/21.

The Bank of Scotland, one of Scotland’s three note issuing banks, has released its new polymer £50 note, featuring Sir Walter Scott and the Falkirk Wheel, a rotating boat lift in central Scotland that connects two major canals.

The International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) 2021 award scheme, which recognises the measures developed by organisations across the currency community to deal with, respond to and mitigate the impacts of COVID, has received eight nominations.