Cash has declined – but is it dying? New York’s retailer mandate, Sweden’s crisis preparedness pivot, and Iran’s payment system under fire all point to the same conclusion: physical currency isn’t going anywhere.
New York City has passed a law requiring retailers to accept cash, Sweden is telling citizens to keep more physical currency at home, and Iran’s domestic payment network has been targeted by strikes. The Payment Expert Podcast team asks whether the narrative that cash is dying was ever really right.
News Editor Louis Thompsett is joined by Editor Rachel Kennedy and Business Journalist Kieran O’Connor to work through a topic that rarely gets airtime at the major payments conferences – and perhaps should.
The episode opens with New York’s mandate, which legally requires retailers across the city to accept cash with no refusals and no surcharges. Is it a reality check for an industry that has spent the last decade talking about stablecoins and pay-by-bank, while a significant share of the population remains unbanked or underbanked?
Is cash still king?
The team examines why the push towards cashless has consistently come from industry, while efforts to protect cash have come from governments – and whether that split tells us something important about what payments infrastructure is actually for.
The digital euro, privacy, the geopolitics of payments resilience, and Sweden’s striking reversal on cashless policy all feature. So does a recent Payment Expert piece on Iran’s Shetab network – and what happens to everyday transactions when physical banking infrastructure comes under attack.
Rather than asking when cash will disappear, is the better question why it still matters?
Episode four of the Payment Expert Podcast is available now on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and all major podcast platforms. To make sure you don’t miss an episode, subscribe to the Payment Expert newsletter.
