Since 2008, the Deutsche Bundesbank has been taking a comprehensive look at how the population pays, what attitudes they have towards cash and electronic means of payment, and what developments can be expected in payment transactions.

In 2017, the Deutsche Bundesbank commissioned a comprehensive study on the history of central banking in Germany between the years 1924 and 1970. 

How will cash be used in the future? A recent Bundesbank study has investigated this question, outlining three different scenarios for cash payments in 2037. The study provides an idea of the social and economic environment in which cash will be embedded in the future.

The conference volume comprises a wide variety of cash related research papers, which were presented and discussed at the International Cash Conference 2019.

Estimates by the Bundesbank suggest that banknotes worth around €268 billion were in circulation in Germany in 2018. Of that amount, roughly 20% was used directly for transactions. The other, far larger share – somewhere in the region of €200 billion – was being hoarded, i.e. stored for an extended period of time by households and firms.

There is a general consensus that distributed ledger technology (DLT) has both disruptive and evolutionary potential for financial markets. This paper focuses on potential implications in connection with collateral management activities for financial transactions, the aim being to analyze the challenges and opportunities of DLT in the current regulatory environment for this specific use case.

In a study prepared together with Professor Friedrich Schneider of the Johannes Kepler University Linz, illegal demand for cash in Germany is investigated. The study presents an overview of economic research on the use of cash in the shadow economy as well as fresh empirical analyses by the authors. They look at the influence of the shadow economy on cash lodgements at Bundesbank branches and the demand for banknotes in Germany.

How much does a cash payment cost? How long does it take? What costs arise at which points? And how do cash payments compare with cashless payments in terms of costs? Answers to these and other questions are provided by this study on the costs of cash payments in the retail sector, contributing to the debate on the efficiency of payments at the point of sale (POS).