Role of Cash in Consumer Resilience and Freedom to Choose – IMIA’s Response to EU Consumer Agenda 2025-2030
Cash serves as an important consumer protection instrument — it safeguards competition and preserves real payment choice. The ease with which consumers can access, deposit, and reliably pay with cash, directly affects how much freedom they have when choosing how to pay. This matters for consumer resilience – everyone’s ability to manage their finances and […]
Cash Legislation Initiatives in European Economic Area 2022-2024 – Overview
The IMIA has been actively following and engaging with central banks and policymakers on the euro cash legislative proposal as well as national cash infrastructure and access and/or acceptance conditions and policies over the past two years. Through our exchanges with policymakers as well as cooperative associations, we felt that an up-to-date overview would be […]
Pro-active Policies for Cash Payment Habit Key for Crisis-Resilience
· Due to its unique crisis-resilience and crisis-prevention attributes, euro cash infrastructure needs to be legally secured and uniformly supported, guaranteeing easy-and-convenient access and widely applied mandatory acceptance. · Private electronic and digital payment methods and the potential digital euro alone are not sufficient in the digital age to support the crisis-resilience of the European […]
IMIA’ Position on the European Commission’s Draft Regulation on the Legal Tender of Euro Banknotes and Coins
The IMIA calls for clarity on whether the Proposal implies and guarantees euro cash payments acceptance obligation at point-of-sale. The IMIA is concerned that the obligation for Member States to only intervene with remedial measures when a level of non-acceptance of payments in cash undermines the principle of mandatory acceptance implies that ex ante unilateral […]
Clarifying the Legal Tender Status of Euro Banknotes and Coins
IMIA is of the opinion that it is needed to guarantee absolute obligation to accept cash payments at the point-of-sale, business-to-consumer or government service-to-consumer transactions, uniformly across the eurozone, securing euro cash as a free payment choice to citizens. Therefore, legislative action at EU level is needed to enhance legal certainty and enshrine the legal […]
The Case for Cash: Freedom of Choice
IMIA’s view on why it is pertinent to promote and maintain cash payments as reliable and viable and free consumer choice option and therefore advocating safeguarding and investing in cash infrastructure (for wide access and acceptability) as a public good. Cash is the only form of public money intuitively known, understood, utilised and, crucially, trusted […]