Cash Connections – Conceptualizing the Cash System as Public Infrastructure

This paper reflects on recent initiatives in the US, the EU, and globally to redesign physical cash denominations by engaging public input and critical inquiry on who and what is represented on money, and ultimately, what money represents. These initiatives come at a critical historical juncture when physical cash is used and imagined differently in the context of a greater turn to private digital payment systems to manage everyday financial transactions. Indeed, central bank-led efforts to develop digital forms of state money are a response to the displacement of cash as people turn to the increasingly gated communities of private payment infrastructures. At the same time, everyday consumers in developed economies are often unaware of the distinctions between private and public payment systems and the costs associated with maintaining these infrastructures. Ironically, just as novel programs to redesign physical cash aim to connect people emotionally and tangibly to physical cash, the less often many everyday consumers come into contact with physical cash, or indeed, pay attention to what is being represented and how on physical cash denominations. It is this tension and changing interplay between cash and digital forms of money that I aim to explore in this paper, while reflecting on the implications of people’s shifting relationships with cash for the resilience of the public good qualities of the cash system as a public infrastructure.