SNB’s Tschudin Stands by Cash While Hailing Instant Payments
(Bloomberg) — Swiss National Bank Governing Board member Petra Tschudin reaffirmed her institution’s commitment to banknotes, even as she extolled the virtues of Switzerland’s instant payment system.
“Cash payments will also continue to play a role — we have therefore begun designing a new banknote series,” she said in a joint speech with her deputy, Thomas Moser, on Wednesday.
Speaking to money-market managers in Zurich, the central bank’s newest interest-rate setter highlighted that the “SNB expects instant payments to become the standard option for account-to-account payments and it anticipates that, in the longer term, it will also be possible to use this payment option at retail points of sale.”
Less than a month ago, SNB data revealed that debit cards overtook bills and coins as the most widely used payment method in Switzerland last year. Non-cash methods of payment surged in popularity during the pandemic, and have since gained further traction.
A national plebiscite to enshrine the existence of physical money into the constitution will likely be held in the coming years, with the Swiss government already saying it supports such a move.
The SNB insists that it remains agnostic as to the means of payment citizens want to use. Still, the central bank, government and private sector have convened an expert group to identify problems in the supply of physical money if they arise.
–With assistance from Bastian Benrath-Wright.
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