Swedish cash management service provider Loomis has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire certain assets and liabilities of SecurePost AG, a subsidiary of Die Schweizerische Post (Swiss Post Group).

There is much talk and activity around Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) at the moment, particularly retail CBDCs. As one reads the papers and listens to the frequent webinars about them, it is striking that there is a requirement for CBDCs to replicate the performance of cash. And that is clearly proving a challenge.

Following the success of the Future of Cash online event in February 2021, the organisers – AGIS Consulting and CashEssentials – are continuing the conversation and providing a coherent story of today’s cash challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities.

The last year has been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to surprise and to wreak huge damage. But perhaps there is another global issue that is just as urgent – namely, climate change and, as part of that, environmental sustainability.

The evolution of the security thread has happened at breakneck speed, with the pace accelerating in recent years. Today 95% of all paper banknotes contain a security thread and the options available can feel bewildering even to those familiar with banknotes. There is now a new way to make sense of all this – read the just published ‘Security Threads for Banknote’ report from Currency News™.

In last month’s Currency News™, Clemens Berger of Louisenthal wrote about the importance of embedded security features and how they are the benchmark for the overwhelming majority of banknotes. This month, he follows up with more information specifically on how their substrate family – Hybrid ADDvance® – is part of that story.

For many people, their perception of plastic is negative. Plastic is one of the world’s ‘bad guys’ these days, with newspaper headlines and TV programmes dominated by images of polluted oceans or mountainous garbage dumps. But, as always, the truth is more nuanced than the ‘all plastic is bad’ trope might have you believe.

The UK was the first major economy to pass laws for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and has cut emissions by more than 40% since 1990. It’s also committed to reduce its emissions at least 68% compared to 1990 levels – this is the fastest rate of reductions from a major economy to date and will help contribute towards the international goal of limiting the global temperature rise to below 1.5°C.

G+D has also announced that it is joining forces with the Swedish fintech start-up Doconomy to enhance payment solutions with digital sustainability-oriented tools.

With a climate goal of a 25% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2022 (base year 2016), Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) and its papermaking and feature subsidiary Louisenthal state that they are making a significant contribution towards climate protection – surpassing the goal, and achieving a reduction of 32% in 2020.

Portals published its Sustainability Report on April’s Earth Day. With two UK paper mills, one at Overton making banknote paper based on cotton and one at Bathford making security papers based on wood pulp, sustainability is potentially a big issue for the company.

The year of the pandemic saw Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) take a wide range of steps to ensure payments worked effectively, according to its 2020 Annual Report.

Mexico’s new 100 peso banknote has beaten more than 100 other candidates to win the prestigious Banknote of the Year Award for 2020, awarded by the International Bank Note Society (IBNS).

Late last year Danmarks Nationalbank began the upgrade of its banknote series with a new 500 kroner, setting the scene for more advanced security features across all its banknotes.

A number of central banks are investing time and money to understand the life cycle and performance of banknotes based on tracking the changes in individual banknote detector scores over time. It does this by reading banknote serial numbers, and their detector data, and analysing the results. Given the number of detectors on a sorting machine, the volume of data generated reaches the realms of ‘big data’.

As described in April's Comment article, other than the current pandemic, the main topic of major global concern – and one that will endure long after the pandemic has (we hope) receded – is the environment.

The success of the new polymer series and falling transactional demand are behind the Bank of England’s proposal to close its regional cash distribution centre in the northern city of Leeds, in February 2023.

As part of a series of webinars from the World Banknote Summit, Jacques Lang presented for Seprinto & Partners (S&P) three examples of how they have helped banknote printers optimise their production, reducing their consumables and waste.

Brink’s has bought PAI, Inc, the largest privately-held provider of ATM services in the US, for $213 million. PAI offers managed services and tools for ATM owner-operators, as well as owning its own ATMs. It writes its own software, providing cash management and maintenance solutions for ATMs.

Portals, the second largest commercial banknote and security paper manufacturer, has entered into an agreement with Fedrigoni, one of the leading European producers of specialty papers and self-adhesive labels, to buy its security business based in Bollate in Italy, which specialises in security threads and foils.