At a moment when cash machines are disappearing, bank branches are closing, and digital payments increasingly dominate everyday commerce, the Bank of England has delivered one of its clearest public defences of cash in recent years.

Speaking at the Banknote Conference in Washington DC on 14 May 2026, Victoria Cleland — the Bank’s Executive Director for Payments — argued that preserving choice in payments is not simply about consumer preference, but about protecting financial inclusion, strengthening resilience, and maintaining trust in the economy.

“Choice in payments is essential to a system that works for everyone,” Cleland said. “By supporting a range of payment options from cash to instant digital methods and emerging types of money, we can help to maintain trust, promote competition, and ensure that no one is left behind.”

For advocates of cash, the speech marked a significant intervention. While governments and financial institutions across the world continue to pursue digital payment strategies, Cleland’s remarks repeatedly returned to a central point: cash remains indispensable.

Cash use may decline — but it is not disappearing

The Bank acknowledged the long-term decline in cash payments across the UK. In 2024, cash accounted for 9% of total payments by volume. Yet Cleland stressed that this should not be mistaken for irrelevance.

“There is a paradox of cash,” she said. “While cash is used less frequently for transactions, notes in circulation continue to grow.”

Importantly, she rejected the notion that Britain is moving towards a cashless endpoint.

“At this stage, it is difficult to know where the long-term floor might be,” she noted. “But to be clear, I’m talking about a floor, not the disappearance of cash altogether.”

That distinction matters. For years, cash has often been framed as a fading legacy system — tolerated during transition but ultimately destined for obsolescence. Cleland’s speech instead positioned cash as a continuing pillar of the payments ecosystem.

The Bank also reaffirmed its institutional commitment to maintaining physical currency infrastructure.

“At the Bank, we will always produce banknotes to meet demand,” Cleland said. “We are committed to ensuring that physical cash will remain available to any and all who want to use it.”

Cash and the politics of exclusion

One of the most striking sections of the speech focused on the social consequences of an increasingly digital economy.

Cleland pointed to data showing that 2.6 million people in the UK remain heavy cash users. She also highlighted that cash dependence is concentrated among groups already vulnerable to exclusion: low-income households, elderly people, unemployed adults, and those who are digitally excluded.

“Cash is an essential part of daily life for many, providing a simple, reliable way to budget,” she said.

The speech also drew attention to disability access. Citing recent Bank research, Cleland noted that 44% of people with disabilities use cash regularly.

“Cash is not simply a preference but an essential tool for accessibility, independence, and inclusion,” she said. “Removing or marginalising cash risks excluding people who already face barriers in daily life.”

This framing moves the debate beyond nostalgia or habit. Cash, in the Bank’s telling, is not merely a payment method. It functions as social infrastructure — particularly for people navigating economic precarity, disability, technological barriers, or institutional distrust.

Resilience after Spain and Portugal blackouts

Cleland also connected the future of cash to a broader question increasingly shaping global payment policy: resilience.

As cyber risks, infrastructure failures, and geopolitical uncertainty intensify, central banks are becoming more cautious about overdependence on singular digital systems.

“A system with multiple payment methods is less vulnerable to outages and cyber incidents,” she said.

The speech referenced the widespread outages in Spain and Portugal in 2025, which disrupted electronic payment systems and renewed public attention on the importance of physical cash during emergencies.

“If one payment channel fails, others must remain available,” Cleland warned.

She noted that the Sveriges Riksbank has already advised households to keep cash at home as part of emergency preparedness guidance — a remarkable reversal in a country once considered one of the world’s most aggressively cashless societies.

The implication was unmistakable: cash is increasingly being reframed not as inefficient infrastructure, but as backup infrastructure — a resilience mechanism when digital systems fail.

Cash as the Ultimate Safeguard for Inclusion

From a social justice and accessibility standpoint, the Bank of England's latest data underscores just how deeply millions of citizens rely on physical money. According to the Financial Conduct Authority’s Financial Lives Survey, an estimated 2.6 million people in the UK remain heavy cash users. Furthermore, internal Bank of England research indicates that 14% of the population selects cash as their absolute preferred payment method, and a quarter of all UK adults could not survive more than a single week without access to physical notes.

Crucially, Cleland highlighted that removing cash disproportionately harms society’s most vulnerable populations, turning financial exclusion into a systemic barrier:

"Cash use is highest among groups who are already more vulnerable to exclusion – including digitally excluded adults, those with no qualifications, the unemployed, low-income households, and adults aged 85 and over... Removing or marginalising cash risks excluding people who already face barriers in daily life."

The address also brought forward vital new research showing that 44% of people with disabilities use cash regularly. For many individuals facing cognitive, visual, or physical impairments, the straightforward nature of paper money provides a level of autonomy that multi-step digital authentication, biometric checkpoints, and complex online banking interfaces simply cannot match.

"Cash is not simply a preference," Cleland noted, "but an essential tool for accessibility, independence, and inclusion."

Innovation should expand choice — not eliminate it

Despite the strong defence of cash, the speech was not anti-digital. Cleland repeatedly emphasised that innovation in payments can deliver real benefits, from faster transactions to improved accessibility tools.

But she argued that innovation should coexist with cash rather than replace it.

“Innovation should expand choice, not narrow it,” she said.

The Bank used the speech to outline its wider payment strategy, including upgrades to RT2 settlement infrastructure, work on systemic stablecoin regulation, and ongoing exploration of a potential digital pound.

Yet even while discussing emerging technologies, Cleland returned to the principle of plurality.

“Our collective responsibility,” she said, “is to build a system where cash, digital payments, and emerging forms of money co-exist safely and resiliently.”

That coexistence may become one of the defining political and economic questions of the coming decade. As payment systems consolidate around platforms, data ecosystems, and increasingly automated forms of commerce, the struggle over cash is no longer just about notes and coins. It is about who gets included, who retains autonomy, and how resilient societies remain when systems fail.

For the cash industry — and for millions who still rely on physical money — the Bank of England’s message was unusually direct: cash still matters, and preserving it is a public responsibility.