Unlocking the Future of Cash to 2030: Scenario Workshop @ EMEA Cash Cycle & Payments Seminar
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- May 5, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 8
Workshop: Unlocking the Future of Cash 2030: Navigating Trends and Challenges in a More Uncertain World, 4 hours, 50 participants, in English
25.11.24, Cape Town, South Africa, 2024 EMEA Cash Cycle & Payments Seminar (ICCOS), organised by Currency Research
Method: Scenario building
Unlocking the Future of Cash 2030:
Navigating Trends and Challenges in a More Uncertain World
This session on the future of cash in 2030 at the EMEA Cash Cycle & Payments Seminar in Cape Town brought together 50 senior delegates from 11 central banks, 4 commercial banks, and 5 suppliers across Africa, Southern Asia, Europe and the US.
The strategic session leveraged insights from the IMF, the World Bank, and other leading institutions to explore the future of cash through 2030.
Photos & videos on this page © Currency Research
Workshop objectives and participants
Currency Research, the leading global provider of cash and payments conferences, commissioned this workshop based on a previous session with Raiffeisen Bank International.
The aim was to combine networking opportunities with practical foresight training.
To do so, we used the latest insights of leading institutions and combined them with various risks and opportunities in scenarios. Scenario is strategic foresight's prime method for analysing futures in a structured and systematic manner.
About 50 delegates from 11 central banks, 4 commercial banks, and 5 suppliers across Africa, Southern Asia, Western Europe, and the US, took part in the session, among which:
Key takes-away:
The future is not binary but hybrid and flexible.
Rather than about choosing between digital and physical money, the future is about building robust hybrid systems. Being able to switch between cash and digital payments indeed ensures greater resilience of the whole payment system.
The real challenge is to continuously improve the efficiency of cash operations while preparing for a wide range of alternatives
including those that may require (temporary) scaling up of the cash infrastructure (e.g. natural disasters, cyber-attacks, fraud, power cuts, but also future regulations aimed at maintaining access to cash).
Cash use may not only follow new patterns in the future but develop in a non-linear fashion and become increasingly unpredictable altogether.
The scenario method helped delegates break free from linear thinking and expand awareness of these more complex dynamics ahead. Plausible scenarios, once identified, become tangible and motivate people and organisations to make the necessary changes.
By identifying and preparing for various scenarios early, organisations can build competitive advantages (private sector) or enhance stability (CBs),
sometimes with relatively low efforts (see Shell example below). The future may be uncertain, but it need not be unprepared for.
A look back at the 'Unlocking the Future of Cash to 2030' session
Networking supported by the latest findings from leading sources
The workshop opened with a networking session supported by the latest findings from leading global institutions.
Delegates were invited to explore critical trends and challenges dispatched over seven themed tables covering various aspects, such as:
Post-quantum cryptography and building up quantum capacities by 2030 (WEF),
Increasing energy demands, in particular in Africa (IEA) or in relation to AI development (IEA),
Trade, protectionism and futures of free trade areas in Africa (AfCFTA) and the EU,
Monetary policy and future interest rates according to the IMF World Economic Outlook to 2029,
Rising climate and nature-related risks (ANCA, FSD Africa & McKinsey), and their impacts on agriculture, food security and health, trade and tourism, infrastructures and mobility, to name a few.
What is the most likely future for cash in 2030?
After this networking session, delegates moved on to discuss the likely future of cash in their country by 2030.
Sharing the group's findings revealed that most of the 13 participating countries expected minimal to moderate changes in the use of cash by 2030, mainly:
Maintaining the use of cash
Further convergence between cash and digital payments
Slight decrease in the use of cash
A brief introduction to strategic foresight
Unlike forecasting which extrapolates probable developments from quantitative data, strategic foresight helps manage uncertainty. Uncertainty manifests itself in the form of different futures, i.e. scenarios, being plausible (as opposed to one probable future).
More on the scenario method here.
Foresight is essentially a shift in mindset: from seeking to uncover the likely future (forecasting) to seeking to explore the implications of many different futures (scenarios). Hence foresight doesn't focus on the most likely future, but rather on futures with the greatest implications for the topic considered.
At best, scenario exercises focus on a positive relationship between:
The plausibility of the risk or event (low to medium)
The impact of the risk or event (medium to high)
The level of effort required to deal with it (low to medium).
This positive relationship between the trio: plausibility – impact – effort is best illustrated by the famous scenario exercise of the Shell Company.
The Shell example is a perfect illustration of what a scenario exercise can reveal about the future, and help to remedy with minimum effort for maximum result.
(click > to expand) A legendary example: The Shell Company
Three global scenarios 2030: A framework for assessing impacts on the cash cycle
After this introduction, delegates were presented with 3 global reference scenarios* 2030 specifically developed for our session. The three global scenarios provide a structured framework for assessing potential changes and disruptions to the cash cycle around 2030.
They are based on the most recent IMF (October 2024) and World Bank (June 2024) economic outlooks to 2029. Each scenario follows a different economic baseline which is associated with a key risk or opportunity that gives the scenario its main direction - and title.
* Global, to be relevant to delegates from 4 continents, and Reference, because they provide general orientation rather than fully-fledged scenarios.
Overview of the three global reference scenarios to 2030
1 2 3
The 3 global scenarios provided delegates with solid but concise background information to help them articulate a considered future for cash in their country in 2030.
The 3 scenarios cover the areas of:
Geopolitics
Trade & economic policy
Macroeconomics,
International development & climate financing, sovereign debt
Climate & nature-related risks
Quantum & payment technology, cybercrime, digital regulations
The 'Trade & economic policy' area is shown below. Our curated sources are shaded in grey.
The delegates were advised that some references, such as 'WB' for the World Bank, make authoritative claims to knowledge, while others present plausible but speculative hypotheses or scenarios. In the example below, this is the case of 'ISS', the European Union's Institute for Security Studies, which has developed a desirable scenario 2030 around the full implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
Greater cash use variations in 2nd round with global scenario
Each country selected one global scenario, discussing its implications for cash by 2030 and potential response strategies.
Our second round of sharing then revealed much greater variations in projected cash use than in the first round. Not only would cash increase in many scenarios but the level of uncertainty would make it more challenging to produce and circulate cash efficiently.
Besides, for countries already experiencing a decline in cash, a key question was how to maintain crisis readiness and cash expertise while reducing cash infrastructure?
Our takes-away
This four-hour session was a good example of the benefits of short strategic foresight sessions.
Immediate Impact
Participants quickly developed enhanced capabilities to recognise and assess future opportunities and risks. Early risk identification can create competitive advantages for private players or support central banks and regulators in maintaining economic stability.
Shifting Mindsets
As participants developed insights and strategic responses, their mindset shifted in two key ways:
Moving beyond binary thinking (cash vs. digital) to embrace hybrid futures
Recognising the value of robust strategies that work across multiple scenarios
Building Resilience
The session demonstrated how strategic foresight serves as an essential tool for building resilience in the cash cycle. This is manifested by:
Pursuing parallel side strategies alongside the overall strategy
Maintaining core capabilities (e.g. in cash) while building for different plausible futures (e.g., going tellerless or cashless)
Developing adaptability and monitoring capacities in the face of uncertain times
Managing Uncertainty
Perhaps most importantly, the session demonstrated how uncertainty can become manageable through structured preparation. As the Shell example showed, identifying plausible developments early allows organisations to take measured steps today - sometimes with modest investments - to prepare for tomorrow's challenges.
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