Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking at Fiserv’s Cash & Logistics Connect Forum in Boston.  While I certainly liked speaking on the topic of cash management in a year when there have been so many interesting changes (and so much more cash in circulation!), I mostly enjoyed meeting so many people who live and breathe currency management on a daily basis.

On top of that, Mark Frost and everyone at Fiserv truly put together an amazing lineup of speakers to address almost anything you can think of related to cash.  From Mark’s initial analysis on changing cash trends gleaned from bank data on ATM and branch cash to Mark Sievewright’s presentation forecasting the end of cash by 2025, the presentations and subsequent discussions were lively and spirited.  I particularly enjoyed Scott Schuh’s (of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston) presentation on the survey results from a consumer payments study conducted recently.  As soon as the results are published online, I will post the link for everyone.

For those of you not in attendance, I’ll just hit on a few highlights regarding cash in circulation from my presentation:

• Unless something changes drastically in the next few months, we will reach $1 trillion in circulation by the end of 2010.
• For those of you who found yourself saying “We’re just printing money!” anytime in the last year, you were right.  Cash in circulation has risen by over $100 billion between 1Q07 and 2Q09.

In June 2009, we saw our first dip in cash in circulation since August 2008.  As of June 30, 2009, cash in circulation was $907 billion.

• Banks hold approximately 5% of the cash in circulation.  70-75% of cash is held abroad and 20-25% is in circulation between consumers, retailers and banks.

To all of those at the Forum, thank you for a great conference!