The Right to Cash

This book challenges the assumption that physical money is destined for extinction. While cash is used less frequently for everyday payments, demand for banknotes and coins remains strong as citizens, businesses, and governments increasingly recognise their importance for resilience, privacy, financial inclusion, and monetary sovereignty.

Bringing together insights from economics, law, finance, public policy, and geopolitics, the authors examine the changing role of cash in an era of rapid payment innovation. The book explores major debates surrounding payment resilience, financial surveillance, access to cash, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), the digital euro, programmable money, and the future relationship between public and private forms of money.

Drawing on evidence from Europe and beyond, it argues that cash is more than a payment instrument. It is a vital component of economic security, democratic participation, and public trust in the monetary system. Offering a fresh perspective on one of the most significant questions facing modern finance, the book will be of interest to central bankers, policymakers, financial regulators, banking and payments professionals, cash-industry practitioners, security specialists, and scholars of money and political economy.