Cash Is Still King: The SARB's Cash Smart Strategy

In a fast-evolving digital payments landscape, cash still continues to play a critical role in the South African economy. In June 2026, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) published a position paperentitled “Towards a Cash Smart Society” (the Position Paper). The Position Paper sets out the SARB’s position on the future role of cash in South Africa and outlines its Cash Smart Strategy. It follows on from the SARB’s 2025 Cost of Cash Study.

The SARB has identified the following core challenges within the cash ecosystem, which the Cash Smart Strategy is intended to address:

the cash value chain is expensive;
the number of cash access points, particularly in rural areas, is declining, which affects access and financial inclusion;
counterfeiting, cash robberies and inconsistent banknote quality standards pose persistent risks to the security and quality of the cash ecosystem;
the cash ecosystem is fragmented, with multiple independent actors who all operate under different standards; and
there is no common data or reporting framework that provides a real-time, aggregated view of cash operations.

The Cash Smart Strategy is underpinned by three core objectives: (1) affordable cash, aimed at reducing the cost of cash; (2) accessible cash, focused on ensuring broad and equitable access to cash across urban and rural areas; and (3) ethical cash, which seeks to promote the ethical, secure and accountable stewardship of physical currency.

Cash is viewed as a critical public-interest component of the national payment system, and the Cash Smart Strategy is intended to safeguard it. The SARB intends for cash to be treated as a system-wide public good, governed through an integrated framework that balances efficiency, competition, resilience and inclusion.

The Position Paper recognises the following conditions as necessary for a modern physical currency system:

accessibility, ensuring users can reach cash services;
availability, guaranteeing cash is present when needed;
acceptance, ensuring cash remains a valid tender for essential transactions;
affordability, preventing cost barriers for the end-user;
authenticity, encompassing both the security of the supply chain:
physical quality of the currency; and
resilience, ensuring the system can withstand systemic shocks.

It is noted that, to embed the above conditions in a future South African cash ecosystem, they must be given legal effect through regulation to ensure consistent and practical implementation.

To modernise the cash ecosystem, the Position Paper proposes an integrated framework comprising activity-based and proportionate licensing; minimum sector-wide standards applicable to banks and non-bank service providers; regulation of cash-related activities across the system; defined delegation arrangements between the SARB and a national cash utility for specified functions; and the creation of a regulatory framework for the expansion of white-label ATMs.

Similar to developments in the digital payments space, the SARB intends to create a public utility within the cash ecosystem and to take a more active role within the ecosystem. The intention is to create a cash utility that will expand access to wholesale cash and reduce the costs of cash. It is further envisaged that the cash utility will create value by reducing the inventories carried throughout the supply chain by many participants.

The proposition of white-label automated teller machines (ATMs) is seen as an important access mechanism for sustaining cash availability, particularly as traditional bank-owned ATM infrastructure is being rationalised.

As with the regulatory amendments within the Payments Ecosystem Modernisation project, the proposed regulation will be focused on functions rather than institutional form. The intention is to create a cash ecosystem that addresses all functionaries within the ecosystem. The SARB recognises the functionaries within the cash ecosystem as:

banks and other deposit takers;
cash-in-transit (CIT) and processing providers;
automated teller machine (ATM) operators and cash terminal operators;
retailers and essential service merchants;
closed-loop cash-to-digital and cash-out networks (to the extent that they operate cash-in/cash-out perimeters); and
other service providers that handle, transport, recycle, authenticate, store or distribute cash.

The Position Paper notes that South Africans still rely on cash and that it continues to play a critical role in everyday commerce.

An annexure to the Position Paper sets out the policy considerations for the proposed physical currency regulations. The proposed regulations are intended to preserve six ecosystem outcomes:

accessibility and availability of cash services;
acceptance for essential in-person transactions;
affordability, ensuring that the cost of accessing cash does not become exclusionary;
security across the full chain;
trust and quality, including authenticity and fitness requirements for participants; and
contingency readiness as a national fallback.

The SARB positions the Cash Smart Strategy as a reflection of its commitment to ensuring that cash retains a clearly defined and protected role and the creation of a wholistic cash ecosystem, given effect through regulation to ensure consistent and practical implementation. It is anticipated that further engagement and formal consultative processes will follow as the SARB finalises the envisaged framework and architecture for the cash ecosystem. The Position Paper is a reminder to all of us that, while digital payments represent the future of payments, cash cannot be left out of the conversation.