V Cash Pay Day – August 16. halt cash exclusion

With Rafał Górski, the run initiator We are talking about the request to keep cash in circulation, Cash Pay Day and run plans for the future.

Margaret Jankowska:What crucial questions have no 1 always asked you in connection with erstwhile celebrations of Cash Pay Day, and what are the answers to them? You can give from 1 to 3 examples.

Rafał Górski: I truly miss 1 question: “How do we know that we lost the war for cash?”

Not erstwhile the last bill is gone. We will lose if we inactive have the formal right to pay cash, but in practice there will be no anticipation to do so, due to the fact that there will be no store, parking lot or office that will accept this cash from us. The law will exist, but it will be dead.

This is how freedom is most frequently lost – not due to 1 spectacular ban, but due to a series of "small" and facilitating the life of change.

photo of the civilian Affairs Institute

First, ATMs introduce cash collection limits. They then restrict access to low denominations. Then you hear in the store that they don't have "small" to spend the remainder and ask you to pay electronically. Finally, it turns out that the law enshrined in the Act already exists only on paper.

So the fight for cash is simply a fight for a real choice of Poles and Poles and for the rights enshrined in the laws to be reflected in everyday life.

→ Is cash free? Readers’ Stories •Margaret Jankowska

Second question?

"Why actually defend cash erstwhile most people are already paying out of cash?".

Many of us think that cash is needed by others, but not me: due to the fact that I have a card, I have a phone, I don't request cash all day.

This is only until it turns out that without cash you will not meet your regular needs. present you choose a card or phone, but next day you may have no choice.

Imagine that there is A malfunction of your bank strategy or cyber attack or a war breaks out And abruptly you can't buy food, medicine, or gas the car. Then you halt asking me what I request cash for. You just know. The deficiency of cash is no longer a problem of the financial system. This is your problem and your family.

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A fewer years ago, many of us did not believe that the virus could halt the world. And yet he stopped. Therefore, it is worth remembering: things that seem impossible present can become everyday tomorrow.

We don't organize Cash Day so everyone pays cash. It's impossible, utopian, and we're realists. We organize it so that no 1 is forced, a policy of facts done, to usage only 1 way to pay.

Freedom doesn't mean you can pay with a phone, a card or an eye rainbow. Freedom is that you can choose. A limited choice is not a choice. And where the choice ends, the dependency begins. And dependency leads straight to control and coercion due to the fact that you have no alternative, you can't choose otherwise.

→ Cash Paying Day, or the fight against misinformation •Jerzy Dziemidowicz, Rafał Górski

→ Non-cash society – six scenes from everyday life •Justyna Pierzyńska

So this is not a theoretical dispute. Following Russian attacks on the energy infrastructure, the National Bank of Ukraine created the POWER BANKING network, whose facilities are to enable cash withdrawals and payment execution besides during blackouts. On April 28, 2025, a full power failure in continental Spain and Portugal shut down card and ATM payment systems. People went to get basic products, but not everyone could get cash to pay for these products.

Cash exclusion doesn't even require blackouts or cyber attacks.

Not long ago, in Radom, an 82-year-old client after the ATM stopped his card for respective days did not have access to his own money, as the facility of his bank was cash-free and he did not usage the smartphone and the BLIK app.

And finally, question three.

"Who will benefit most in the planet without cash?".

The problem is the concentration of power that allows us to control our lives. It's always been that way, we don't make wheels.

So, the little cash we have, the more information about our lives we request (we want) to leave on digital systems. due to the fact that all payment tells us where we've been, what we've bought and what customs we have. Many specified data can build a very accurate image of our lives. It is cognition that has large value – for corporations and banks, but besides for government, political parties and services. We're laying down on a tray for apparent convenience.

→ Andrzej Zybertowicz: Cash – 1 of the pillars of freedom. Reason for Diagnosis of Digital Civilization •Andrzej Zybertovich

For years now there has been a strong lobby in Poland to advance further digitalisation of payment transactions and reduce the function of cash. His visible actors include the Polish Non-cash Foundation and the Coalition for Non-cash Trading and Micropayment. However, it is worth asking: should the convenience of digital payments mean agreeing to a planet in which each transaction leaves a lasting way and in which the citizen has only 1 available method of payment?

Cash is the only commonly available means of payment that allows you to buy without leaving a digital trace. As long as there is cash, there is simply a space of life that belongs to us alone.

A truly free society is not the kind where everyone pays in cash. It's the kind where no 1 is forced to pay in just 1 way.

When we pay electronically during regular running, we most likely see nothing incorrect with it, nor do we think of the categories you mentioned: choice, freedom, concentration of power. Let us besides remember that generations have grown up in the digital world. So possibly he's already absorbed us humans, or possibly there's inactive a chance to redecorate it. Do you have any ideas what to do and how to halt cash exclusion in practice?

I have 3 suggestions.

First of all, Let's usage cash.. civilian rights are not only maintained by laws, but besides by regular habits. Let's take responsibility. If we halt utilizing cash, ATMs, post offices and the anticipation of paying cash in many places will disappear. The marketplace will rapidly recognise that it is not worth maintaining this infrastructure.

Secondly, Let us request compliance. If the store, office or another institution for no good reason refuses to accept cash, let us react. Let us talk to entrepreneurs, let us study specified cases to the Institute of civilian Affairs, the National Bank of Poland and support social organisations that deal with this problem. civilian rights don't defend themselves.

Third, Let's talk about it with the others.. Most people see the importance of cash only erstwhile it's gone. It is worth reminding your family, friends and colleagues that cash is not only a means of payment but besides a warrant of the resilience of the state, privacy and freedom of choice.

→ How the way we pay affects our lives. Cash and electronic payments •Jarosław Ogrodowski

It's been a year since the erstwhile Cash Day. How did our attitudes towards cash change at the time, and how did regulations (in Poland, in Europe) change? Are there any clear tendencies?

In the last year, 2 opposing directions of change were further outlined. On the 1 hand, digital payments become a regular habit for many people, and access to cash is gradually restricted. On the another hand, the war, failures and experiences of average citizens remind us that cash is needed as collateral and warrant of real choice.

The European Union has adopted rules that, as of 10 July 2027, the trader will not be able to pay in cash for goods or services exceeding EUR 10 000. associate States will be able to set even lower limits. The domino effect will begin. due to the fact that erstwhile we decision the border, there will be temptations to slow and successively decision it further and the limitations will become more and more burdensome until we just surrender. It's like the ladder you're climbing. If you break the levels below, you'll never get off, there's no turning back.

For any cash transactions of between 3 000 and 10 000 euro, the client will gotta confirm his identity. However, this does not mean that all seller will identify each customer. The work will include entities identified in the anti-money laundering legislation. In practice, our identity will be checked, among another things, on the basis of an identity card, passport or appropriate electronic means of identification. If the client does not agree to the verification, the transaction will not be carried out. For now, we are not all alerted due to the fact that these amounts for most of us are pure abstraction in our regular lives. But this is the first step.

At the same time, the European Union is inactive working on government to guarantee that cash remains widely available and in rule accepted. This is shown by basic

The paradox of European policy: on the 1 hand, the usage of cash is being reduced and subject to expanding control, and on the another hand, the European institutions admit that the improvement of digital payments cannot effectively destruct physical money.

But the fact that we gotta fight and warrant the laws in force should rise our vigilance, due to the fact that something is wrong.

In Poland, the basic regulations in the last year have changed little. There is inactive a limit of PLN 15,000 for cash payments between entrepreneurs. Consumers, on the another hand, do not include the general statutory limit on the value of cash purchases. Yet.

However, everyday reality changes. It reduces ATMs and conventional cash handlers.

According to the National Bank of Poland data, at the end of 2025 there were 20 409 ATMs in Poland – 332 little than a year earlier.

The importance of cash is best confirmed by the experience of crisis situations. Ukraine, mentioned earlier by me, has created the POWER BANKING network, a strategy of facilities equipped with emergency power supply, spare communication channels and increased stocks of cash. They are intended to enable withdrawals and the execution of basic payment operations besides during long-term power outages.

In turn, last year's blackout on the Iberian peninsula caused the European Central Bank to consider this event as a flagship example showing the peculiar function of physical cash in situations where digital systems neglect and will neglect us more and more.

Snapshot from this year's holiday, photograph by the Institute of civilian Affairs

In Spain, on that peculiar day, on April 28, 2025, the number of cash payments and withdrawals decreased by about 55 percent, as terminals, connectivity and part of ATMs did not work. However, those who had previously paid cash were able to pay where the shops remained open.

Therefore, the most crucial question is not: ‘Is cash legal?’ but: ‘Can we truly usage it?’.

We may have the right to cash in the bill, and at the same time we may not have an ATM close us, a cash facility or a store that wants to take it.

→ Cash – salvation in times of crisis or liquidation? •Justyna Pierzyńska

I am afraid that in the coming years, the biggest threat to freedom of choice will not be the formal ban on cash, but its gradual pushing out of everyday life and applicable cash exclusion. As it was with access to public transport, after the transformation in Poland. It's very easy to get free of something. This is much harder to reconstruct or replace effectively. The question is, are we learning from our mistakes?

What Action Plans Has Coalition for Cash, whose initiator is the Institute of civilian Affairs?

We will proceed to do what we consider to be the most crucial from the beginning: to combine people and organisations beyond divisions around the right of citizens to choose how to pay.

We plan to monitor cases of cash exclusion, conduct educational activities and remind decision makers that cash is part of the safety and resilience of the state and civilian liberties.

We besides want the issue of cash to live in public debate. This is not a dispute between banknote supporters and mobile app supporters. The question is whether in an increasingly digital planet we will hold a real choice. As long as this choice is threatened, the run will be needed.

The most crucial task will be to prepare draft legal changes to defend consumers paying in cash.

We start with a circumstantial problem: the seller says there are no change, so he refuses to sale or forces the client to pay by card or phone. We want the law to make it clear that the seller is obliged to decently settle the transaction, including the issuance of the rest. The package will be presented to the Ministry of Finance, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the Sejm, the legislature and the Ombudsman. We will besides carry out advocacy and search allies beyond political divisions.

At the same time, we want to trigger civic pressure: collect at least 2000 fresh signatures under the petition “Cash Gun!” to encourage respective 100 people to send emails to MPs and senators, collect reports of refusal to accept cash and study where cash payment is actually blocked.

In addition to the ombudsman activities, the Institute, as the initiator of the Coalition for Cash, will implement by the end of February 2027 a nationwide educational task "Cloudmoney – education in the value of cash circulation", implemented with the National Bank of Poland as part of the economical education programme. We will print 3000 copies of the Polish edition of the book Brett Scott ‘Cloudmoney. Cash, cards, crypto – the war for our wallets" and we will give it free to public libraries and their subsidiaries throughout Poland.

→ Brett Scott: Cloudmoney. Cash, cards, code – War on our wallets

→ War on Cash: Brett Scott at the 6th Geopolitical Forum in Łódź •Brett Scott, Rafał Woś

We will besides organize educational meetings in various regions of Poland, especially in smaller towns. These will be meetings with experts, together with discussions on the future of the payment system, the risks of its digitisation and the function of cash. We encourage you to study on the request for specified meetings. Local organizers are welcome. There will besides be about a ten-minute social reportage that we will make available on the Internet. As a result, the voices of participants in meetings and experiences of those at hazard of cash exclusion will scope more widely than only the audience present in libraries.

We besides organise a debate during Technopolitical Forum – “Cash exclusion. Does digitalisation of payments endanger citizens' freedom and security?". It will be attended by prof. Andrzej Zybertowicz, Dariusz Marciasz from Euronet and Prof. Jakub Górka. Let us remember that older people, poor, indebted, surviving outside large cities or not utilizing free technology can be pushed beyond the basic economical cycle. Therefore, talking about cash is not a large deal about sentiment for banknotes. It is simply a discussion about freedom of choice, privacy, resilience of the state, interests of the financial sector and almost everyone to participate in social life.

The goal is simple: the right to cash is to operate not only on paper, but besides at the box office, parking lot, bus and office.

What have you prepared for the 5th edition of Cash Pay Day?

The 5th edition of Cash Paying Day is to show that the defence of cash cannot be limited to 1 symbolic day of the year.

→ Cash Payday: August 16th or all day? •Rafał Górski

We want to encourage Polish and Polish to scope for cash not only on 16 August, but regularly, all day – due to the fact that only the cash we usage will stay available and widely accepted.

This year we are starting the recruitment of public libraries and their subsidiaries, to which 3,000 free copies of Brett Scott’s book “Cloudmoney. Cash, cards, code – War for our wallets". It's not just about handing out books. We want libraries to become places of discussion about how money digitization affects privacy, civilian rights, economical independence, safety and social resilience.

On August 16, 2026 a message promoting Cash Paying Day will besides be displayed on screens of more than 4,000 devices Euronet. We besides pay attention to cash exclusion – a situation in which a man has his own money, but cannot usage it, due to the fact that there is no ATM, cash station or seller refuses to accept cash due to the fact that there is no anticipation to spend the rest.

The slogan of this year's edition is "STOP cash exclusion". Therefore, we encourage: let us have cash in our wallet and pay it all day. Freedom of choice will not stand alone. You gotta usage it. It's best all day.