Coming soon, the GEAB Bulletin 185: Adapting to a cashless world

Inflation, debt, financial bubble, purchasing power… How to digitize risks in order to neutralize them?

The risk of economic and financial crisis has become a favourite subject. For a publication like ours, after nearly twenty years of analysis of the global systemic crisis, it is fascinating to note that the topic around an “imminent economic crash” is now in the media all over the place.

Among political and economic decision-makers as well, the awareness of the risk of collapse of the economic system is constantly present. This significantly changes the prevailing attitude compared to the subprime crisis, where the mindset was more of an arrogance assuming that crises would not affect us or were behind us.

This change in attitude means that while the risks of crisis have never disappeared, solutions are multiplying to keep the system afloat. That is why this month our team has chosen to look at existing digital and technological instruments to address these risks. They mainly focus on innovative monetary and payment systems.

Thus, central bank digital currencies, which torment all central bankers worldwide, struggle to find their audiences and demonstrate their usefulness but tend nevertheless to impose themselves. Indeed, they offer means of action and persuasion that central bankers are not prepared to abandon.

Monetary systems are not devoid of paradoxes, like the euro on which Europeans have heavily relied to build a common economic but also political foundation which struggles to provide coherence and cohesion within the EU. Nevertheless, it remains effective and, far from disappearing, it still remains the most unshakeable common denominator.

Digital payment systems, on the other hand, are much more convincing and effective. Public and private actors have convergent interests, namely, to maintain the health of the markets (at least in appearance). However, a restructuring of power relations is underway, and we will make anticipations around it in this issue.

By only seeing solutions, and most often digital ones, to all the crises weighing on our world, the system tends to minimize tensions on the materials and environmental resources necessary for this type of innovation. This is a theme that we will explore in our regular section on investments, trends, and recommendations.

A detailed Summary of Issue No. 185:

• Editorial
• Future of Payment Systems: Embracing innovation in the cashless era
• Crisis risks and the role of new currencies (central bank digital currency, cryptocurrencies, digital payments)
• Euroland 2025-2030: From wallets to virtuality, what will remain of the (European) Union
• United Kingdom 2025: Renewed governance and shifting dynamics in Euro-British ties
• Investments, trends and recommendations

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