By Wolfgang Kneilmann
Resilient cash systems depend on clear visibility and stronger collaboration across the entire ecosystem. In this article, Wolfgang Kneilmann outlines how data and shared insight can help stakeholders stay ahead of rising pressures. By embracing smarter forecasting and coordinated action, you can support a cash cycle that remains stable and accessible.
In an increasingly digital world, ensuring resilience and efficiency of cash cycles requires more transparency, data-driven insights, and collaboration.
Cash continues to play an important role in society. Consumers value its universal acceptance, ease of use, security, and anonymity. It also serves to provide individuals and households with an overview of their spending, enabling them to better manage their budgets during moments of financial difficulty. In the UK, 2025 figures by Nationwide Building Society show that cash payments increased for a third year in a row, with 10% more transactions made from ATMs in 2024 than 2023, driven by consumers wanting to keep track of spending.
However, emerging challenges are threatening the availability, accessibility, and overall acceptance of cash. The modern cash cycle is under pressure from factors such as shrinking cash infrastructure, increased volatility driven by crises and the growing demand for more efficient and sustainable cash processing.
The importance of visibility
Today’s cash cycle challenges impact a broad ecosystem – from central and commercial banks to cash-in-transit (CIT) providers, ATM operators, retailers, and end users. Many stakeholders continue to operate with legacy systems and face challenges due to limited digital integration. Manual data entry, paper-based processes and siloed information flows lead to delays in cash reconciliation and hinder the effective distribution of cash and a streamlined cash supply chain.
Crises amplify volatility in cash demand, straining infrastructure. Keeping up the resilience of cash is crucial to stabilize nations, their economy and sovereignty. At the same time, processing costs and sustainability requirements are rising. Effectively addressing these challenges requires improving the visibility of supply and demand of cash, forecasting required volumes and optimizing processes accordingly. It forms the foundation for greater transparency and informed decisions, and operational resilience. To understand how to achieve it, visibility can be broken down into two key areas: operations and circulation.
Operations visibility focuses on the internal data within an organization, including machine utilization and performance, service performance, cash center/operations performance, intra-logistics performance and order/client contract performance. It primarily aims for cost optimization and efficiency. On the other hand, circulation visibility involves understanding cash movement across the broader ecosystem, including central bank vaults, commercial bank vaults, branches, ATMs, recyclers, CIT vaults, smart safes, retail back-office safes and tills and consumers’ wallets.
To gain this level of visibility, data needs to be shared from different stakeholders. Real-time data exchange of digitally connected organizations enables a more collaborative, data-driven approach to cash oversight. For example, commercial banks can provide figures on the number of banknotes in ATMs and distribution, enabling central banks to manage cash supply.
Additionally, if central banks have visibility of banknote quality, current recirculation rates, volumes, and demand, alongside their own operational insights such as cash center performance and machine utilization, they can take steps to ensure the continued authenticity, availability, and accessibility of cash. These steps might include implementing more resilient infrastructure and ensuring a certain number of cash denominations are manufactured to meet consumer demand.
Harnessing the power of data and AI
Data is central to achieving sufficient cash visibility across the ecosystem. Creating digital connections between stakeholders is an important first step, and the use of AI can take this insight to the next level. AI-led innovations can offer analysis of economic conditions, consumer behavior and seasonal trends to forecast any future changes in cash demand, allowing for improved allocation of resources. For instance, during holiday seasons, AI can anticipate increased demand, allowing proactive cash provisioning. In quieter periods, it helps avoid overstocking and unnecessary transports, reducing costs and idle cash.
AI can help to identify any costly inefficiencies in the cash cycle and suggest cost-saving or sustainable improvements. For example, a shorter transit route for cash deliveries leads to reduced carbon emissions, or a journey that avoids areas of heavy traffic at peak times. A more (energy) efficient transport route for cash transit can also lead to cost savings for organizations.
Cash needs innovation
The cash cycle demands the same digital attention and need for innovation as the broader financial system. The growing convergence of data, AI and ecosystem-wide collaboration is laying the groundwork for a smarter, more responsive, and future-proof cash cycle – one that can adapt in real time to shifting consumer needs, economic conditions, operational and environmental pressures. Combining the positive aspects of cash with an optimized ecosystem increasing the ease of access to cash and cost efficiency marks the basis for our future cash cycle that ensures the payment choice for our societies.
Cash will continue to hold vital social and economic value, therefore protecting its availability and accessibility is essential. By improving transparency, visibility and control of the cash cycle, stakeholders in the ecosystem can safeguard its relevance and ensure it evolves as part of a digitally driven future- on that is resilient, efficient, and ready to meet tomorrow’s challenges.
About the Author
Wolfgang Kneilmann has served as the Head of Currency Management Solutions at Giesecke+Devrient Currency Technology since August 2017, where responsibilities include managing the division focused on currency management. Prior to this role, Wolfgang Kneilmann held various positions at NCR Corporation from 1997 to April 2017, including Vice President for NCR Europa with full P&L responsibility and strategic oversight in Europe, Russia, and Turkey, and Area Vice President for Central Europe. Earlier in the career, Wolfgang Kneilmann was part of the executive team at Swissrisk, specializing in banking and wealth management solutions, from 2001 to 2007, and led sales for German banks at NCR Corporation from 1997 to 2001.
