Recent imtfi_ica items

Cash as a Public Good – the Expert View

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dr Dalinghaus, Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Ripon College, is also an affiliated scholar at the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI), University of California at Irvine, which has made itself a name as one of the leading institutes when it comes to the role of money in people’s daily lives and practices, and to the best way to go about financial inclusion.

The Director of the IMTFI is Professor Bill Maurer, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the Filene Research Institute, Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. He will also be one of the keynote speakers at the ICA’s Global Currency Forum 2020 in Barcelona.

Cash is not a crime

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

New study by IMTFI postdoctoral scholar finds efforts to curtail cash use hurts poor and does little to stop terrorism financing

2019 Interview with Dr. Ursula Dalinghaus

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On August 1st, 2019, Cash Matters published the white paper Virtually Irreplaceable – Cash as Public Infrastructure by Dr. Ursula Dalinghaus, making a case for how and why cash must be understood as a public good.

Virtually Irreplaceable: Cash as Public Infrastructure

Mon, 7 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This white paper by Dr. Ursula Dalinghaus, Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Ripon College and affiliated scholar at the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) University of California, takes a close look at the role of cash in society and the specific characteristics making it a public good, citing relevant studies, scholars and field experiments.

"Cash in circulation is growing on a global scale by approximately 3% per year; 80% of all payments worldwide are cash transactions. Cash is an essential part of every stable financial and economic system", stated ICA Chairman Wolfram Seidemann. "This paper demonstrates that cash is more than just a means of payment. It is a public good, part of modern life and vital for people's everyday lives."

Key takeaways

Cash is a public good that guarantees ease of use, accessibility, privacy, and many other unique qualities in local, national, and global monetary systems....

Keeping Cash: Assessing the Arguments about Cash and Crime

Fri, 4 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last decade there has been a revolution in payment technologies. Digitization of bank accounts, new digital payment applications, and an array of new kinds of financial products and services have opened up a wide range of choices for storing, saving, sending, and receiving money. Digital finance has become an important tool in efforts to facilitate formalfinancial inclusion across the globe.

And yet, cash has also remained an essential tool for people’s financial practices and lives alongside these new payment forms. Evidence from both developing and developed payment markets shows that while digital payments may have increased exponentially, the demand for physical banknotes and coins has kept up with the pace of digital finance. Physical currency or physical accounting devices are ancient and crosscultural technologies, in continuous use since at least 1600 B.C. Aside from risks and benefits, they are wedded to an incredibly durable set of behaviors and social...