Cleland: Payments choice vital for inclusion, resilience, cash
Bank of England Executive Director Victoria Cleland stressed the critical role of choice in the evolving payments landscape. She highlighted the need for cash, digital payments, and new forms of money to coexist to ensure inclusion, resilience, and innovation.
Choice as a foundation for payments
Cleland emphasized choice as a foundation for a well-functioning payments system, underpinning inclusion, resilience, competition, and innovation.
She noted the paradox of cash: declining transactional use (9 percent of total payments by volume in 2024) but growing notes in circulation.
She highlighted that 2.6 million people in the UK are heavy cash users, and 14 percent choose cash as their first method, with a quarter unable to go a week without it.
The Bank of England is working to enable choice by issuing new notes, strengthening RT2, supporting the National Payments Vision, and adapting regulatory frameworks for digital money, including exploring a digital pound.
Innovation should expand, not narrow, choice, ensuring cash and digital payments coexist safely.
Choice drives inclusion, resilience, innovation
Choice underpins inclusion, particularly for vulnerable groups; 44 percent of people with disabilities regularly use cash, which Cleland called an "essential tool for accessibility.
" Removing cash risks exclusion.
A diverse payments system also strengthens resilience, offering reliable fallbacks during outages, with cash proving vital in past system failures, such as in Spain and Portugal in 2025.
The Bank of England's renewed RT2 service enhances this resilience.
Choice further drives competition and innovation, benefiting businesses with lower costs and new efficient options.
The BoE is modernizing both digital infrastructure and the cash ecosystem to ensure a robust and inclusive future.