ESTA Reports on Own Vision for Cash

As an initial member of the European Retail Payment Board (ERPB) working group, the European Security and Transport Association (ESTA), supported by other organisations, sought to foster debate on a number of issues relevant to ‘obstacles to cash acceptance’, a topic being investigated by the ERPB and about which it had issued a questionnaire.

There was strong resistance from the banking and Payment Service Provider (PSP) members of the ERPB to this. As a result, ESTA left the group and issued its own report covering a number of issues that it feels are critical to the meaningfulness and credibility of a report about access to and acceptance of cash.

ESTA’s view is that the decline of cash is not happening by chance. It is provoked by the conflict of interest of stakeholders primarily responsible for making cash available to the public. Having their own, more profitable, payments instruments to offer to their clients, banks have very little interest, if any, in cash and are publicly and persistently acting against it.