Payments and Market Infrastructure
The Global Risks Alliance (GRA)
As cash use falls, payments depend more on digital systems that can fail together through outages, cyber attacks or power loss. Cash, offline payment options and central bank money provide fallback. This page sets out how the balance between cash and digital payments affects resilience, how access and fallback are measured, and who decides.
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Cash and digital payment resilience is the ability of people to keep paying when digital systems fail, and it depends on how far cash has declined. Cash, offline payments and access to central bank money provide fallback. Central banks, legislators, payment schemes and preparedness authorities hold the decisions.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Cash and digital resilience · RTGS system · Business day 235
Fallbacks and financial access. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Fewer users mean fewer ATMs, branches and cash logistics, which raises costs and makes cash harder to use when digital channels fail.
Card, mobile and account payments depend on power, telecom and a few processors. A wide outage stops all of them at once.
People without bank accounts, digital skills or connectivity rely on cash. Its decline can exclude them from commerce and services.
Cash is the public's only direct access to central bank money. Central banks are considering digital currencies partly to preserve that access.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Cash access | The ability of people to withdraw and deposit cash at reasonable distance and cost. |
| Offline payment | A digital payment that can be made without a live network connection. |
| Central bank money | Money that is a liability of the central bank, such as cash and reserves. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash share of point-of-sale payments | percent of transactions | periodic | Central bank payment diaries | ESTIMATED |
| ATMs and cash access points | count per hundred thousand adults | annual | IMF Financial Access Survey | OFFICIAL |
| Population within set distance of cash access | share of population | periodic | Central bank studies | ESTIMATED |
| Offline payment capability | available or not, by scheme | on change | Scheme rules | DECLARED |
| Unbanked adults | share of adults | periodic | World Bank Global Findex | ESTIMATED |
| Major digital payment outages | count and duration | annual | Overseer and operator reports | OFFICIAL |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| IMF Financial Access Survey | Access points and usage of financial services | Free, IMF terms |
| World Bank Global Findex | Account ownership and payment use | CC BY 4.0 |
| ECB study on payment attitudes of consumers | Cash and card use in the euro area | Free, ECB terms |
| Sveriges Riksbank payments reports | Cash decline and preparedness in Sweden | Free, Riksbank terms |
| BIS central bank digital currency surveys | Central bank work on digital currencies | Free, BIS terms |
Payments and Market Infrastructure prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Central banks | How to preserve cash access and whether to issue a digital currency | Usage, access and outage evidence |
| Legislators | Whether to require cash acceptance or access | Comparative laws and exclusion evidence |
| Payment schemes | Whether to support offline payments | Outage experience and design options |
| Civil preparedness authorities | How payments continue in a wide outage | Preparedness plans and exercises |
Digital payments are fast and convenient, but they depend on power, telecommunications and functioning infrastructure. During outages, natural disasters and cyber incidents, people without cash or alternative means may be unable to buy food, fuel or medicine. At the same time, the cash infrastructure itself, from ATMs to cash transport, becomes harder to sustain as cash use falls. Several authorities are examining how to preserve resilience and access.
Payment resilience depends on diverse means of payment and their infrastructures.
Cash works without power or networks, but requires access points, transport and acceptance by merchants.
Some card and digital systems can operate offline with limits, settling later when connectivity returns.
Older people, people with disabilities, low-income households and rural communities may rely more on cash.
Experience from major outages and disasters has shown that cash use rises when digital payments fail, but only if people hold cash and can obtain more. As cash networks shrink, this fallback weakens. Some authorities now treat cash access as part of national resilience planning, alongside offline digital capabilities and clear public guidance for disruptions.
Surveys of payment behaviour and cash use show trends and dependence by group.
Mapping of cash access points and their distribution, which may thin out in rural areas.
Analysis of how people paid during past outages and disasters.
Study of offline and resilient payment designs, applying payment and financial market technology.
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