Are central banks too reliant on SWIFT for domestic payments?

Central bank settlement systems are the the tectonic plates of the payment system: they are vitally important to our lives, but we never see them in action. All of a nations' electronic payments are ultimately completed, or settled, on these systems. If they stop working, our financial lives go on pause, or at least regress to older forms of payment.

In this post I want to introduce readers to a crucial feature of these payments tectonic plates: their reliance for domestic settlement on SWIFTNet, a financial messaging network used by banks and other financial institutions to communicate payments information. Think of SWIFTNet as a WhatsApp for banks, but exclusive and very secure. 

This reliance – or over-reliance – is best exemplified by a recent decision by the European Central Bank. The Target2 settlement system has long been the bedrock layer of the European payments universe. All domestic payment ultimately get tied-off on the system. Since it was introduced in 2007, Target2 has been solely reliant on SWIFTNet for sending and receiving messages. 

When the European Central Bank replaced Target2 with T2 earlier this year, it modified the system to have two access points: it kept SWIFTNet but added a competing messaging network, SIAnet, to the mix. As one commentator triumphantly put it, "SWIFT’s monopoly for access to the T2/T2S system is broken."

SWIFTNet is owned by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, which is structured as a cooperative society under Belgian law and is owned and governed by its 11,000 or so member financial institutions. Whenever SWIFT gets mentioned in conversations, it tends to be associated with cross-border wire payments, for which its messaging network is dominant. However, for many jurisdictions, including Europe, SWIFT is also integral to making domestic payments. It's this little-known local reliance that I'm going to explore in this post.

The dilemma faced by central banks such as the European Central Bank is that SWIFTNet is an incredibly useful messaging network. It is ubiquitous: most banks already use it for cross-border payments. And so the path of least resistance for many central banks is to outsource a nation's domestic messaging requirements to SWIFT, too. However, this reliance exposes national infrastructure to SWIFTNet-related risks like foreign control, sanctions, snooping, and system outages.

Financial messaging 101

Before going further, we need to understand why financial messaging is important. For a single electronic payment to be completed, a set of databases owned by a number of financial institutions, usually banks, must engage in an intricate dance of credits and debits. To coordinate this dance, these banks need to communicate, and that's where a messaging network is crucial.

Say, for example, that Google needs to pay Apple $10 million. Google tells its banker at Wells Fargo to make the payment. Wells Fargo first updates its own database by debiting Google's balance by $10 million. The payment now has to hop over to Google Apple, which banks at Chase. For that to happen the payment flow must progress to the core of the U.S's payments system, the database owned by the Federal Reserve, the U.S.'s central bank.

Along with most other U.S. banks, Wells Fargo has an account at the Federal Reserve. It communicates to the central bank that it wants its balance to be debited by $10 million and the account of Chase to be credited by that amount. Once Chase's account at the Federal Reserve is updated, Chase gets a notification that it can finally credit Apple for $10 million. At that point Apple can finally spend the $10 million.

This entire process takes just a second or two. For this "dance of databases" to execute properly, the Federal Reserve, Chase, and Wells Fargo need to be connected to a communications network.

The sort of messaging network to which the central bank is connected, and the stewardship of that network, is thus crucial to the entire functioning of the economy.

Proprietary messaging networks or SWIFTNet? 

The Federal Reserve is somewhat unique among central banks in that it has built its own proprietary messaging network for banks. All of the 9,000 or so financial institutions that use the Federal Reserve settlement system, Fedwire, must connect to the Fed's proprietary messaging network to make Fedwire payments. To make international payments, however, U.S. banks must still communicate via SWIFTNet.  

Let's flesh the story out by trekking north of the border. Whereas the Federal Reserve has no reliance on SWIFTNet, Canada's core piece of domestic settlement infrastructure, Lynx, relies entirely on SWIFTNet for messaging.

For example, if Toronto Dominion Bank needs to make a $10 million to Scotiabank, it enters this order into SWIFTNet, upon which SWIFT forwards the message to Lynx, which updates each banks' accounts by $10 million and sends a confirmation back to SWIFTNet, which tells Scotiabank that the payment has settled.

For payments nerds, this network setup is called a Y-copy topology. The network looks like a "Y" because the originating bank message is relayed from the sending bank via SWIFTNet, the pivot at the center of the Y, down to the settlement system, and then back up via SWIFTNet to the recipient bank. It is illustrated below in the context of the UK's payment system, with the CHAPS settlement system instead of Lynx, but the idea is the same.

A Y-copy network topology for settling central bank payments in the UK [source]

The upshot is that the Federal Reserve controls the messaging apparatus on which its domestic settlement depends, whereas Canada outsources this to a cooperative on the other side of the ocean.

Many of the world's small and middle-sized central banks have adopted the same Y-copy approach as Canada. This list includes Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Nigeria, UK, Sweden and South Africa. However, some members of this group are starting to have second thoughts about fusing themselves so completely to SWIFT.

Removing the single point of failure

The European Central Bank is at the vanguard of this group. Prior to 2023, the European Central Bank was in the same bucket as Canada, relying entirely on SWIFTNet to settle domestic transactions. 

With its upgraded T2 system, Europe doesn't go quite as far the Fed's model, which is to build its own bespoke messaging network. Rather, European banks now have the option of either sending messages to T2 using SWIFTNet, or they can use SIAnet, a competing network owned by Nexi, a publicly-traded corporation. SIAnet stands for Societa Interbancaria per l'Automazione, a network that originally connected Italian banks but has now gone pan-European.

The reason for this design switch is that European Central Bank desires "network-agnostic connectivity." This dual access model will make things more complex for the European Central Bank. If a commercial bank originates a SIAnet message, the central bank will have to translate this over to a SWIFT message if the recipient bank uses SWIFTNet. Nevertheless, the European Central Bank believes this dual structure will offer more choice to domestic banks.

The ECB also hints at the enhanced "information security" that this new setup will provide, without providing much detail. The UK's recent efforts to update its core settlement layer sheds some extra insights into what these security improvements might be. Right now, the UK's core settlement system, CHAPS, can only be accessed by SWIFTNet, much like in Canada, so that all domestic UK payments are SWIFT-reliant.

In its roadmap for updating CHAPS, the Bank of England is proposing to allow banks to access the system via either SWIFTNet or a second network, which doesn't yet exist. The idea is to enable "resilient connectivity" to the core settlement layer, especially in periods of "operational or market disruption." Should SWIFTNet go down there would be no way for financial institutions to communicate with CHAPS, and the entire domestic economy would grind to a halt. A second network removes the "single point of failure" by allowing banks to re-route messages to CHAPS.

The Bank of England also highlights the benefits of competition, which would reduce the costs of connectivity.

This sounds great, but there are tradeoffs. Using a a single network for both domestic and international payments is valuable to the private sector because it offers standardization and efficiencies in banks' processing. Adding a second option will also complicate things for the Bank of England, since it will have to design and build a system from scratch, much like the Fed did, which could be costly. Either that or it will have to find another private option, like the ECB did with SIAnet. This second network may not be as good as SWIFTNet which, despite worries about resiliency, has been incredibly successful.

When CHAPS went down earlier this year for a few hours, for instance, it wasn't SWIFT's fault, but the Bank of England's fault. The same goes for a full day outage in 2014. 

Comparing a V-shaped network topology to Y-Copy in an Australian context [source]

The type of settlement topology that the UK is proposing is known as "V-shaped," since all messages are sent directly to the central bank settlement system for processing via any of a number of messaging networks, and then back to the recipient bank. The difference between a V-shaped topology and Y-copy is visualized in the chart above in an Australian context, but the principles apply just as well to the UK.

Sanctions and "the SWIFT affair"

The decision to make domestic payments less dependent on SWIFTNet is much more easy to make for outlier nations like Russia. SWIFT is based in Belgium and is overseen by the Belgian central bank, along with the G-10 central banks: Banca d’Italia, Bank of Canada, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, Banque de France, De Nederlandsche Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, European Central Bank, Sveriges Riksbank, Swiss National Bank, and the Federal Reserve. That put SWIFT governance far out of Russian control.

You can see why this could be a problem for Russia. Imagine that only way to settle domestic Russian payments was by communicating through SWIFTNet. If Russia was subsequently cut off from that network for violating international law, that would mean that all Russian domestic payments would suddenly cease to work. It would be a disaster.

Needless to say, the Central Bank of Russia has ensured that it doesn't depend on SWIFTNet for communications. It has its own domestic messaging network known as Sistema peredachi finansovykh soobscheniy, or System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS), which was built in 2014 after the invasion of Crimea. Prior to then, it appears that "almost all" domestic Russian transactions passed through SWIFTNet – a dangerous proposition for a country about to face sanctions.

Mind you, while Russia has protected its domestic payments from SWIFTNet-related risk, it can't do the same for its international payments. SWIFTNet remains the dominant network for making a cross border wire. There is no network the Russians can create that will get around this.

I'm pretty sure that most larger developing states and/or rogue nations have long-since built independent domestic financial messaging systems to avoid SWIFTNet risk. I believe China has done so. Brazil has the National Financial System Network, or Rede do sistema financeiro nacional (RSFN). India also has its own system, the Structured Financial Messaging System (SFMS), built in 2001. India is even trying to export SFMS as a SWIFT competitor.

The Japanese were typically way ahead on this. The Bank of Japan built its messaging network, the Zengin Data Telecommunication System, back in 1973, several years before SWIFT was founded.

The last SWIFTNet risk is snooping risk. This gets us into the so-called SWIFT affair. After 9/11, the U.S. intelligence agencies were able to pry open SWIFT through secret broad administrative subpoenas. They had the jurisdiction to do so because one of SWIFT's two main data centres was located in the U.S.

To ensure data integrity, SWIFT had been mirroring European data held in its data centre in Belgium at its U.S. site. That effectively gave U.S. intelligence access to not only SWIFT's U.S. payments information, but  also information on foreign payments sourced from Europe or directed to Europe. Worse, it also provided spooks with data on domestic European payments. Recall that the European Central Bank's Target2 settlement system, which settles all digital domestic payments in Europe, was entirely reliant on SWIFTNet for communications.

When the U.S.'s snooping arrangement was made public by the New York Times in 2006, it caused a huge controversy in Europe. SWIFT tried to placate Europe by building a third data warehouse in Switzerland to house Europe's back-up data. But the precedent was set: SWIFT is not 100% trustworthy. And that may be part of the reason why the European Central Bank chose to downgrade its reliance on SWIFTNet when it introduced its new system, and is surely why other nations want to entirely hive their domestic systems off from it.

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In sum, central banks face a host of complicated decisions in how to bolt on messaging capabilities to their key settlement systems. SWIFTNet is a top notch network. However, too much SWIFT-related risk may be perceived as having negative implications for national security. For large nations with extensive banking industries, building a proprietary domestic messaging alternative seems to be the preferred option. It also seems to be the default choice for rogue states like Russia.

Another alternative is to fallback on using multiple independent networks for access, of which one is SWIFTNet, and thus mitigating exposure to SWIFT-related problems. This is the approach taken by Europe and the UK.

For smaller nations that comply with the global consensus, like Canada, the calculus is different. Building an alternative communications network is likely to be costly. The risk of sanctions and censorship are negligible while the benefits of using a high-quality ubiquitous network for both domestic and foreign payments messaging are significant. Given these factors, it may be worthwhile to bear all SWIFT-related risks and adopt the Y-copy model.

Is fiat money to blame for the Iraq war, police brutality, and the war on drugs?

I often encounter memes claiming that fiat money is to blame for all sorts of government evils. Here is one example from Kraken bitcoin strategist spokesperson & bitcoin meme factory Pierre Rochard:

The military-industrial complex that deliberately creates wars is financed by inflationary State fiat currencies.

— Pierre Rochard (@pierre_rochard) January 8, 2020

The rough idea behind this family of memes is that the Federal Reserve, the world's largest producer of "fiat" money (i.e. irredeemable banknotes), is responsible for financing all sorts of examples of government over-reach, say foreign invasions, police brutality, and the twin wars on terrorism and drugs. It does so by producing seigniorage, or profit, which it passes on to the state. Replace fiat-issuing central banks like the Fed with bitcoin or a gold standard, and seigniorage would cease to exist. With the government's purse strings having been cut, a relatively peaceful society would be the result.

This meme's premise is wrong. In practice, central bank seigniorage in both the U.S. and other developed nations is a very small part of overall  government revenues. And so even if fiat money were to be displaced, say by bitcoin or a gold standard, it wouldn't change the state's ability to fund the war on drugs and adventures in the Middle East.

Let's look at the U.S. Below are two charts showing how much income the Federal Reserve has contributed to the Federal government's overall receipts going back to 1950. (Beware. One chart relies on a regular axis, another a logarithmic axis. But they use the same data). The Fed's contribution has been steadily growing over time. In 2019, it sent about $53 billion to the Federal government.

You may be wondering how the Fed generated $53 billion in profit, or seigniorage, in 2019. Most of this income comes from issuing banknotes, or cash. For each $1 in banknotes that it issues to the public, the Fed holds an associated $1 of bonds in its vault. These bond have typically yielded 3-4% in interest. But the Fed only pays 0% interest to the owners of its banknotes. Which means that it gets to keep the entire 3-4% flow of bond interest for itself. It forwards this income to the Federal government at the end of the year.*

Seigniorage tends to grow over time. (But not always. Below I'll show how Sweden's seigniorage has been shrinking). The larger the quantity of banknotes that the public wants to own, the more interest-yielding bonds the Fed gets to hold, which means more seigniorage. In general, banknote demand increases with economic and population growth.

Interest rates are another big driver of seigniorage. If bond interest rates rise from 4% to 8%, the Fed earns more on the bonds it owns in its vault. Banknotes continue to yield 0% throughout, so the Fed keeps the entire windfall for itself (and ultimately for the Federal government).

By the way, a big driver of nominal interest rates is inflation. If inflation is expected to double, then bond owners will require twice the interest to compensate them for inflation risk. So inflation boosts seigniorage (because it boosts the interest rate that the Fed earns on the bonds in its vaults), and deflation hurts seigniorage (because it reduces interest rates). In the chart above, the one with the logarithmic axis, you can see how the Fed's seigniorage increased during the inflationary 1970s. It flatlined from the mid-1980s to the early early 2000s, which coincides with inflation subsiding.

US seigniorage is relatively small. In addition to enjoying revenues from the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Federal government also gets money from individual and corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement receipts, excise taxes, duties, and more. Below I've charted the relative sizes of these contributions.

As you can see, the Fed's contribution (the grey line) is a rounding error.

Below is a chart showing what percentage of total government revenue is derived from the Fed.

In 2019 the Fed contributed just 1.5% of total U.S. Federal government receipts. This contribution has hovered between 1% to 3% over the last four decades. So the meme that fiat money abetted the Iraq War, the expansion of the police state, or the U.S.'s military industrial complex is mostly hyperbole.

What about other developed nations?

The Bank of Canada provided $1.2 billion in earnings to the Canadian Federal government in 2018. But the Federal government took in $313 billion in revenues that year, which means that the Bank contributed a tiny 0.4% fraction of total revenues. The reason for the big gap between the Bank of Canada's tiny 0.4% contribution and the Fed's 1.5% contribution is the global popularity of the US$100 bill. Canadian cash doesn't enjoy a big foreign market.

I mentioned Sweden earlier. Below is a chart of seigniorage earned by the Swedish central bank, the Riksbank.

Sweden's central bank, @riksbanken, used to earn a handsome profit by issuing banknotes, ie seigniorage.

With cash usage wilting & interest rates hitting zero, seigniorage has collapsed. If these trends continue, issuing cash could become a financial burden for the Riksbank. pic.twitter.com/LCYOJ3q8dZ

— John Paul Koning (@jp_koning) August 28, 2019

Sweden is one of the only countries in the world where banknote ownership has been falling. This de-cashification is compounded by interest rates that have fallen close to 0%. Which means that the Riksbank's bond portfolio isn't earning as much as it used to. This combination has just decimated the Riksbank's seigniorage. In 2018 its seigniorage amounted to a paltry SEK 267 million (US$29 million). This is just 0.00003% of all Swedish central government receipts.

So in sum, central banks in places like the US, Canada, and Sweden are not a big source of government funding. If you want to stop governments from engaging in bad policies like the war on terror, the war on drugs, and foreign meddling, you've got to work within the system. Vote, send letters, go to protests. Sorry, but buying bitcoin or gold in the hope that it somehow defunds these activities by displacing the Fed is not a legitimate form of protest. It's a cop-out.

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P.S. By the way, I am not saying that control of the nation's money supply hasn't been used to finance wars in the past. Obviously it has. Greenbacks helped pay for the Union's war against the Confederates. Henry VIII paid for his wars by dramatically reducing the supply of silver in the English coinage.

*The Fed enjoyed a big spike in seigniorage after the 2008 credit crisis. This is because it issued a bunch of deposits to bank (known as reserves) via quantitative easing. The Fed only had to pay 0.25% interest on these reserves, but the bonds that backed them were earning 2-3%. This QE-related income has declined as the Fed has unwound QE (since reversed) and long-term interest rates have declined.

Swish > cash and bitcoin

Ok, another Sweden post. I keep returning to Sweden because no country has gone further down the road to being cash-free. Since all of us seem to be following the same trajectory, we should probably be paying attention.

Lucky for us, every two years the Riksbank—Sweden's central bank—-carries out a payments survey and puts the data up on its website. One of the most interesting questions that is asked is "which of the following payments methods have you used in the last month?"

I plotted out some of the data and tweeted the result:

Sweden is at the forefront of digital payments. I made this chart with data from the Riksbank payments survey: https://t.co/WTZlFYOl2Y:
1. Debit cards are universal, beating out credit
2. Cash use is plunging but still high
3. Swish adoption is exploding
4. Not much bitcoin usage pic.twitter.com/fal0pfYdMz

— JP Koning (@jp_koning) February 20, 2019

What follows are a few observations.

Swish beats cash

Only 61% of Swedes used cash in the last month, down from 94% just eight years ago. But 62% now use a service called Swish. Swish is a mobile payments app that Swedes use to pay each other in real-time and on the weekend. Think Venmo or Zelle in the US, or Interac e-Transfer in Canada. These sort of payments options are not really used much at the point-of-sale. They're a person-to-person (P2P) payments technology.

Swish was developed by Sweden's banks, not by an upstart tech company. Incidentally, both Zelle and Interac e-Transfer are also owned by banks. (Venmo is owned by PayPal, a fintech). Which goes to show that banks aren't always the slow moving monoliths that a lot of people make them out to be. They'll protect their turf.

Swish was introduced in 2012, around the time that Sweden's legacy banknotes were all being scheduled to be replaced by a new issue of notes. By any measure, the timetable that the Riksbank selected for the switch over was inconvenient for cash-users. Rather than allowing for permanent note switches (like we do in Canada and the US) or a long window (like Sweden did in the 1980s and 1990s), the Riksbank gave Swedes only a year or two to make the swap. In the case of the 1000 kroner note, they'd have to do two swaps in five years. Due to the inconvenience of the changeover, many more Swedes chose to go cashless than would otherwise have been the case. I make this point in an earlier post which I called Swedish betrayal.

The Riksbank chose this timetable because it was recommended to them in 2012 by a collection of private financial institutions including Sweden's big banks. This was at the same time that the banks were introducing Swish. Since Swish and banknotes are direct competitors in the P2P payments space, an inconvenient note switch would have given banks quite the helpful tail-wind.

So Swish's success (at the expense of cash) probably isn't solely a function of enlightened consumer choice--it also benefited from a gentle nudge from the Riksbank (and the private sector, who advised the central bank). 

Debit card way more popular than credit cards

Canada is the land of credit cards. According to a recent Bank of Canada survey, around 39% of all retail payments are made with credit, or 56% of all value spent. Debit is a distant 26%. While debit is more popular in the U.S., credit cards aren't far behind.

So why is debit card usage so popular in Sweden? I'd guess low interchange fees. An interchange fee is how much a retailer must pay for each transaction that a customer makes using a card. In Sweden, interchange fees for credit cards are set at 0.3% while debit is 0.2%. In Canada, credit card interchange fees vary between 1%-2.5% compared. For debit, they are set at 0.25%.

Canadian banks can use the income from credit card interchange fees to fund handsome reward programs and 2% cash back. Swedish banks can't because credit card interchange fees are so low. So from a Canadian shopper's perspective, why use you debit card to buy $100 in groceries when you can use you credit card to get the same groceries and also get $2 cash back? Swedes don't face this same payments calculus—low mandated interchange fees mean that credit card can't come equipped with massive amounts of rewards. So buying 1000 kronor worth of groceries with a credit card doesn't provide any advantages to a debit card.


What happened to the bitcoin payments revolution?

If you want an example of a payments revolution, Swish is it—not bitcoin. Only six out of 2011 Swedes surveyed by the Riksbank used bitcoin to make a payment over the course of the month. That's an adoption rate of just 0.3%.

That being said, it's not as if bitcoin is unpopular in Sweden. Stockholm's Nasdaq/OMX exchange has the distinction of listing Bitcoin Tracker One, the world's first (and one of its only) exchange-traded bitcoin financial products. Bitcoin Tracker One is one of the exchange's most active tracking certificates. At the peak of the bitcoin bull market in December 2017, assets under management ballooned to $600 million.

These statistics illustrate the odd nature of bitcoin's success. Bitcoin was supposed to be a payments, or monetary technology. But this vision has never panned out. Rather, bitcoin has taken off as a great way for Swedes (and everyone else) to gamble. I took up this theme in a recent article for the Sound Money Project:

"Forget online payments; Bitcoin has become the most successful gambling technology to be invented since Henry Orenstein introduced the poker pocket cam in 1999. The pocket cam allowed viewers to see players' cards, revolutionizing the way people watched the game of poker and launching the 2000s poker frenzy.

In what sense did Bitcoin succeed as a gambling technology? At its core, Bitcoin is a pure Keynesian beauty contest. People try to guess what other people guess other people guess Bitcoin's value will be. The price that results from this contest is incredibly unsteady. But these explosive rises and stunning falls provide a fun, challenging, and addictive bet for casual gamblers and deep-pocketed professional speculators alike."

With bitcoin's first and primary function being gambling, a small minority of Swedes (six out of 2011) have been able to piggy back off it and use it for payments. An analogy can be made to other products that have alternative uses, say like how tooth paste's primary use case is to clean teeth, but a few people might use it to remove carpet stains.

The problem is that the very feature that makes bitcoin such a great gamble—its beauty contest nature—interferes with its serviceability as a payments system. I don't think this problem is solvable. Which is unfortunate because in theory at least, bitcoin seemed to have several features that would have made it a decent replacement for cash. 

Swedish betrayal

I recently wrote two posts for the Sound Money Project about Swedish monetary innovation. The first is about an effort by the Swedish central bank—the Riksbank—to force retailers to accept cash, and the other is about the e-Krona, a potential Riksbank-issued digital currency.

This post covers a third topic. For many years now those of us who are interested in cash, privacy, and payments have had our eye on Swedish banknote demand. The amount of paper kronor in circulation has been declining at a rapid pace. Many commentators are convinced that this is due to the rise of digital payments. Since Sweden is at the vanguard of this trend, it is believed that other nation's will eventually experience similar declines in cash demand too.

But I disagree. While digital payments share some of the blame for the obsolescence of paper kronor, the Riksbank is also responsible. The Riksbank betrayed the Swedish cash-using public this decade by embarking on an aggressive note switch.  Had it chosen a more customer friendly approach, Swedes would be holding a much larger stock of banknotes than they are now. As long as other countries don't enact the same policies as Sweden, they needn't worry about precipitous declines in cash demand.

Banknotes are dead, long live banknotes

Across the globe, an odd pattern has played out over the last decade. The proportion of payments that are being made with cash has been rapidly declining thanks to the popularity of card payments. Sweden is no different in this respect, although it may be further along than most:

Source: Reserve Bank of Australia

Oddly, even as developed countries are seeing fewer transactions completed using cash, the quantity of banknotes outstanding has jumped. This increase in cash outstanding, which generally exceeds GDP growth, is mostly due to an increase in demand for large-value denominations, as the chart below illustrates:

Source: Bank for International Settlements

The BIS has a good explanation for this seemingly contradictory pattern. The demand for cash can be split into two buckets: means-of-payment and store-of-value. Banknotes earmarked as a means of payment are generally spent over the next few days. Demand for this type of cash is stagnating thanks to increased card usage. Not so the former. The demand to store $100 bills under mattresses and in safety deposit boxes in anticipation of some sort of disaster is booming. According to the BIS, this is due in part to low interest rates, which makes banknotes more attractive relative to a bank deposit or government bond.

The number of banknotes held as a store-of-value demand accounts for quite a large proportion of total cash in circulation. In a recent paper, Reserve Bank of Australia researchers estimated that 50% to 75% of Australian banknotes are hoarded as a store of value. Keep in mind that these sorts of calculations are subject to all sorts of assumptions. Australia's experience with cash probably applies to most other developed nations.

Sweden, a sign of what's to come?

Which gets us back to Sweden. Sweden differs from all other nations because of what is happening with its banknote count. The quantity of paper kronor outstanding has been consistently plummeting for a decade now, and currently clocks in at just half its 2008 tally:

Surprising, but for the first time in years, the number of Swedish krona banknotes in circulation is growing.

Has Sweden's push to become a cashless society come to an end? pic.twitter.com/T6l1q40Ssu

— JP Koning (@jp_koning) November 6, 2018

Even Norway, which has probably proceeded further along the path of digital payments than Sweden, has experienced only a small decline in notes outstanding, nothing akin to Sweden's white-knuckled collapse. The key question is this: why have most developed nations experienced digital payments renaissances along with stability in cash demand, whereas Sweden's own renaissance has been twinned with a seismic drop in cash demand?

The answer to the question is important. Many commentators (including Ken Rogoff) are convinced that the rest of the world's nations will eventually find themselves in the same situation as Sweden. The allure of digital payments will inevitably lead to an all-out Swedish-style desertion of cash.

I'm not convinced. As I mentioned at the outset of this post, the Riksbank shot itself in the foot by carrying out an aggressive currency swap between 2012-2017. This swap did incredible damage to the paper kronor "user experience", or UX. In response, discouraged Swedes fled from cash and substituted into less awkward alternatives like bank deposits. Let's take a closer look at Sweden's 'great note switch'.

The 'great' note switch

Every decade or two central banks will roll out new banknotes with updated designs and anti-counterfeiting measures. This is good policy since it cuts down on fake notes. These switches are generally carried out in a way that ensures that the public's user experience with cash remains a good one throughout. The best way to maintain cash's UX during a changeover period is to allow for long, or indefinite periods of concurrent circulation between old and new notes. Concurrent circulation cuts down on confusion and hassle endured by note users.

Let me explain with an example. Up here in Canada, the Bank of Canada introduced polymer banknotes between 2011 and 2013. But no time frame was placed on the demonetization, or cancellation, of previous paper $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 notes. Since we all knew from the get-go that we would be free to spend or deposit old Canadian banknotes whenever we got around to it, we didn't have to go through the hassle of rounding up old notes stored under our mattresses and bringing them in for new ones. Apart from the novelty of polymer notes, we hardly noticed the switch to polymer.

Not so with Sweden's rollout of new banknotes. Rather than allowing for a long period of concurrent circulation between old and new notes, the Riksbank announced a shot-gun one-year conversion window for legacy notes. After that point, all old notes would be declared invalid.

For instance, the new 20, 50, and 1000-krona notes were all introduced on October 1, 2015. Swedes had until June 30, 2016—a mere 273 days later—to spend the old notes at retail outlets, after which it was prohibited for retailers accept old notes. If they had missed that window, the Swedish public then had another 62 days—till August 31—to deposit them in banks. After that, all old 20, 50, and 1000 notes would invalid. Owners of invalid banknotes could bring them to the Riksbank, fill out a form explaining why the due date had been ignored, and for a fee get valid ones.

The same shot-gun approach characterized the rollout of the new 100 and 500 the following year. Swedes had 273-days to spend old 100 and 500-krona notes, and another 365 days to deposit them at banks.

I've pasted the time frame for the entire conversion below:

Source: Riksbank

The October 2015 and 2016 switches were preceded by a preparatory demonetization in 2012. At the time, Sweden had two types of 1000-krona note in circulation. The version that had been introduced in 2006 had a special foil strip to combat counterfeiters, but the 1989 version did not. In November 2012 the Riksbank announced that Swedes would have 418 days—till Dec 31, 2013—to use old 1000 notes without foil strips. After that date the notes would be invalid.  

That outlines Sweden's hectic changeover timeline. Now, let's go back to 2012 and put ourselves in the shoes of Hakan, a Swede who has stashed a few 1000-krona banknotes in anticipation of emergencies or other exigencies. In 2012, Hakan would have learnt that all of his 1000-krona notes without foil strips would have to be replaced or declared invalid.

How to deal with this annoyance? Hakan could have replaced them with 1000-krona notes with foil strips, but the Riksbank had also communicated that notes with strips were to be invalidated by 2016. Replacing them with 500 notes would be equally inconvenient, since these were scheduled to be replaced in 2017. Rather than committing himself to a string of inconvenient switches, Hakan may have simply given up and deposited his notes in a bank.

Below I've charted the evolution of Sweden's notes-in-circulation by denomination:

Note the massive 50% decline in 1000-krona notes outstanding between the end of 2012 and 2013. Granted, the 1000-krona was already in decline prior to then. But without the aggressive 2012-13 demonetization, this decline would have been much less precipitous.

Even more glaring is the drop in the number of 500-krona notes beginning in 2015 as the conversion period approached. Rather than swapping old 500-krona notes for new ones, or 1000-krona notes, Swedes instead choose to deposit them in the bank. After enduring a stream of inconvenient note exchanges, were cash users like Hakan simply sick of their product expiring on them? 

A natural experiment: Norway v Sweden

Neighbouring Norway serves as a good control or benchmark for studying Sweden. Both nations have similar tastes for digital payments and cash, identical banknote denomination structures, and their currencies trade close to par. But unlike Sweden, Norway did not implement a massive note replacement effort. This gives us some clues into how Sweden's switch may have affected demand for the paper kronor.

Below I've separately charted the evolution in the value of each nation's stock of 500 and 1000 notes, and the combined large denomination note stock (1000s + 500s).

During the 2015-2017 changeover period, demand for Sweden's 500-krona note plummeted, but uptake of the Norway's 500-krone note continued to grow nicely (first chart). The aggressive demonetization of 2012-13 coincided with a big drop in the quantity of Swedish 1000-krona notes. Meanwhile, the rate of decline in the quantity of Norwegian 1000-krone notes continued as before (second chart). What message do I take from these two charts? Given two otherwise equal nations, the one that subjects its citizens to an aggressive note swap will experience a large decline in the popularity of the targeted note.

As for the last chart, the total value of Swedish high denomination banknotes was once twice that of Norway's count. But it is now equal to that of Norway, despite the fact that Sweden has twice the population. My guess is that if the Riksbank hadn't inflicted a series of aggressive demonetizations on Swedes, folks like Hakan could have blissfully ignored the entire changeover, and Sweden would still have a much bigger note count than Norway. The black dotted line gives a hint of where Sweden might be now if the pre-changeover trend in kronor banknote demand had continued.

Why did the Riksbank betray the Swedish public?

Why didn't the Riksbank adopt the same policy as the Bank of Canada during its own massive note switch? In the charts above its quite easy to point out when the 500-krona and 1000-krona notes were replaced. But try spotting when Canada switched from paper to polymer banknotes:

You can't, because it was a gentle switch, one that didn't hurt cash's UX.

Patriotic Swedes might counter that Sweden isn't Canada, it has its own way of doing things. But during previous Swedish note introductions, long windows of concurrent circulation were the standard. For instance, when the 1000-krona note that was printed from 1952-1973 was replaced by a new 1000 note in 1976, the legacy note remained valid for more than ten years after that, until Dec 31, 1987. And when the next series of 1000-krona notes was rolled out in 1989, the legacy note was accepted until December 1998. Long windows, not short ones, is the Swedish tradition.

A March 2018 report from the Riksbank entitled Banknote and coin changeover in Sweden: Summary and evaluation gives some insights into why a shot-gun switch was chosen instead of a user-friendly approach. Very early on the process, the Riksbank began to consult with firms involved in the movement of cash including the BDB Bankernas Depå AB (a bank-owned cash depot operator), the Swedish Bankers’ Association, the larger banks, ATM operators, and others. One of the questions that was discussed was how long the old banknotes should remain valid. In April 2012, these market participants submitted their preferred timetable for the changeover. One of their preferences was for:

"...the old banknotes and coins to become invalid after a relatively short period so that they could avoid having to manage double versions of the banknotes and coins for an extended period."

These same market participants also requested that the Riksbank demonetize the old 1000-krona notes without foil strips. Removal of this older series meant one less version to manage once the new 1000-krona note was debuted in 2015. Market participants also hoped that the old banknotes wouldn't be exchanged for new ones, thus reducing the total amount in circulation. If you are wondering why bankers might want fewer banknotes outstanding, go read my 'conflict of interest' section a few paragraphs below. 

The timetable that ended up being adopted by the Riksbank in May 2012 was basically the same one proposed by industry. So there you go. The Riksbank introduced a shot-gun approach because that's what Swedish bankers wanted. But in designing the changeover to be convenient for banks, the Riksbank threw the Swedish public under the bus. Nor was it unaware of the inconvenience it was imposing on Swedes. According to the March 2018 report:

"The Riksbank was aware that the timetable would lead to complications for the general public in that there would be a number of different dates to keep track of. The need for information activities would be increased. However, the Riksbank considered that the interests of the cash market were more important..."

Now, if the Riksbank had justified the shot-gun switch as a way to flush tax cheats out, I might be more sympathetic. At least an argument could be made that the public's welfare was being served by imposing a series of inconveniences on them. But as the above quote indicates, the motivations for quickly invalidating old notes was much less nuanced than this. The Riksbank deemed that the 'complications' that the general public had to endure simply weren't as important as the 'interests' of the banks. Full stop.

There is a huge conflict of interest involved in consulting with banks about cash's future. Sweden's bankers would have been quite pleased to provide the most awkward timetable imaginable. After all, they would have been the main beneficiaries. The more Swedes who forsake cash to pay with cards, the more fees banks earn. Furthermore, each kronor that is held in the form of cash is a kronor that isn't held at a bank in the form of a deposit. Banks lust after consumer deposits because they are a low-cost source of funding. One wonders if the Riksbank fully understood this conflict of interest.

Notes for the future

The decline in the kronor count has finally been reversed. In the tweet I embedded above, the amount of paper kronor in circulation rose in 2018, the first increase in many years. The impositions on the the kronor's UX over the last five years are finally drawing to a close. Now that they no longer have to worry about timetables and expiry dates, are Swedes like Hakan finally returning to the market?

The great irony is that the Riksbank, having caused a big chunk of the decline in 1000 and 500-krona note usage, is suddenly getting quite worried about this trend. Earlier this year, Riksbank governor Stefan Ingves lamented that

"There are those who think we have nothing to fear in a world where public means of payment have been replaced completely by private alternatives. They are wrong, in my opinion. In times of crisis, the general public has always sought refuge in risk-free assets, such as cash, that are guaranteed by the state. The idea of commercial agents shouldering the responsibility to satisfy public demand for safe payments at all times is unlikely."

The Riksbank may even roll out an e-Krona, a digital currency designed to meet Swede's desire for "continued access to a means of payment that is risk-free and guaranteed by the state." Odd that Ingves is now so concerned about Swedish access to a risk-free payments medium when he was so willing to ignore the interests of Swedish cash owners just a few years before.

Sweden will probably have to go through another note switch sometime in the late 2020s. I hope that when it comes, Swedish bankers will get a little bit less representation at the table and the Swedish public a bit more.

As for concerned citizens and central bankers in other countries that are planning to introduce new notes, we can all learn some lessons from Sweden's 2012-2017 changeover. Aggressive note switches may be good for private bankers, but they hurt cash-using citizens.  The long-window approach to note switches, not Sweden's shot-gun method, is the customer-friendly approach.

---

Dedicated to my favorite Swedish hockey player:

Electronic money will only save central banks from subjugation if it is anonymous

50 SEK banknote issued by the Riksbank in 1960

"Do we need an eKrona?" asks Stefan Ingves, the Governor of the Riksbank, Sweden's central bank. The Riksbank is probably the central bank that has advanced the furthest in discussions surrounding the introduction of a central bank-issued digital currency (CBDC)—a new form of risk-free digital money for use by the public. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the ECB, and China are also dissecting the idea, with more central banks to come in 2018.

Sweden is approaching the issue from a unique angle, says Ingves. It is the only country in the world showing a consistent decline in cash and coin usage. I've written about this interesting pattern here, here, and here. Below is a chart:

Ingves floats two theories. Either the Swedish public no longer wants central bank money, or alternatively they do want central bank money but not the type that is "made of pieces of paper," preferring instead an as-yet non-existent digital alternative. If so, then it may be the Riksbank's duty to provide that alternative, says Ingves.

Duty is an admirable motivation, but let me propose another reason for why the Riksbank is exploring the idea of an eKrona—self preservation. I think Sweden's central bank is terrified that it will become powerless in the future. It is desperately casting around for solutions to resuscitate itself, one of these being an eKrona. This fear is rooted in the fact that declining cash usage has led to a collapse in the resources that the Riksbank believes that it needs to function.

These worries about powerlessness are shared by central bankers around the world, many of whom expect advances in private payments technology to lead them to the same cash-light world that Sweden is currently entering. Their respective degrees of discomfort probably depend on how advanced their citizens are in the process of shifting away from cash. The Federal Reserve, which issues the world-renown $100 bill, is perhaps the farthest from having to worry, whereas central banks like the Norges Bank and Central Bank of Iceland are much closer to approaching peak cash.

What do I mean by a collapse in resources? Central banks have always been unique among government agencies for their self-sufficiency. Rather than depending on tax revenues to pay for their operations, they are capable of funding themselves internally. Central bankers like Ingves have even made a habit of providing their masters in government with a juicy dividend each year.

The magic behind this ability to self-fund is due to the central bank's monopoly on banknotes. Banknotes get into circulation when a central banker buys an asset, usually a government bond. Because the central bank doesn't have to pay any interest on the banknotes whereas the bonds it holds yield 4% or so, it gets to collects the entire 4% margin for itself as revenue. Out of those revenues it pays its expenses, the remaining profit flowing back to the government as a dividend. 

These dependable and juicy margins, otherwise known as seigniorage, have afforded central bankers a number of luxuries. First, consider the creature comforts. These include large research departments, well-paid staff, good benefits, high status, nice new office buildings, museums with free admission, and plenty of international travel and conferences.

But seigniorage also serves a more important function; as fuck you money. Fuck you money (pardon the expletive, but its such a great phrase) can be thought of as any resource base that is large enough to allow an individual or institution to reject traditional hierarchies (i.e. one's boss) without fearing the consequences. The central bank's seigniorage—its fuck you money—finances a dividend that flows to the government, effectively buying central bankers a uniquely-large degree of autonomy from the vagaries of their political masters. This safe space allows folks like Ingves to pursue their most important task in peace, namely jigging the interest rate up and down in order to set the price level. A government department that must pass around the hat each year in order to get funding would never be able to attain the same degree of independence.

At this point you may be able to see the Riksbank's problem. As the supply of krona banknotes in circulation withers, the Riksbank's seigniorage is getting smaller and smaller. This threatens not only the creature comforts that Swedish central bankers have gotten used to, but also the flows of fuck you money necessary to secure their sacred independence. If the popularity of kronor banknotes continues to drop, the perceived risks of political subjugation of the central banking machine will only grow.  

Let's take a look at some numbers. Below is a chart of Riksbank seigniorage going back to 2008.

The Riksbank calculates this number by taking the total earnings from its assets (both income and capital gains) and allocating an appropriate portion of this to the banknote component of its liabilities. The total costs of managing the bank note and coin system (printing, handling, salaries, designing etc) are deducted from this amount, leaving banknote seigniorage as the remainder.

Whereas Riksbank seigniorage clocked in at around SEK 5 billion in the late 2000s, it has plunged to SEK 560 million in 2016. If the rate of decline in banknote usage continues, my calculations show that seigniorage could fall to half that amount by 2018 and go into negative territory at some point in the early 2020s.

Falling global nominal interest rates are one important explanation for the decline in Riksbank seigniorage. As I said earlier, central bankers garner the margin between the supply of 0%-yielding banknotes in circulation and the interest payments they earn on bonds. If bond rates are declining, the margin shrinks and seigniorage suffers. But even if Swedish interest rates were to slowly recover over the next few years, this wouldn't halt the deterioration in Riksbank seigniorage. The constantly eroding base of banknotes on which the Riksbank relies for its profits would more-than-cancel out the effects of higher rates.

To shore up its flow of fuck you money, the Riksbank needs to find other sources of income. Which may be the true reason for Ingves's recent broaching of the idea of an eKrona. Given that a decline in banknotes in circulation is at the heart of the Riksbank's flagging seigniorage, then perhaps the development of a new 0%-yielding product will allow the Riksbank to rebuild its once plentiful resources.

In terms of design, one option the Riksbank is putting forward is to allow Swedes to keep accounts directly at the central bank. It refers to this option as register-based eKrona. I'm afraid that register-based eKrona is destined to be a dud. Private banks have decades worth of experience in providing accounts to the public. A central bank account will always be a poor competitor. Former New Zealand central banker Michael Reddell recently blogged on the topic of an eNZD, recalling the days when his employer offered accounts to employees:

Central banks almost inevitably would lag behind commercial banks in their technology anyway, which wouldn’t make a central bank transactions account product particularly attractive... Frankly, I’d be a bit surprised if there was much (normal times) demand at all (and I think back to the days –  decades ago –  when the Reserve Bank offered –  in direct competition with the private banks –  cheque accounts to its own staff; perhaps some people used theirs extensively,  but I used it hardly at all).

As for the supposed superior credit risk of a central bank account, I just don't see it. Sweden already insures private bank accounts for up to 950,000 kronor ($112,500) and even up to 5 million kronor in special circumstances. A central bank account could only be the superior alternative for amounts north of $112,500, but how many members of the public really keep that much in deposits?

Types of eKrona compared to cash and bank account money (source)

Given that register-based eKrona would fail miserably in securing the Riksbank a new stream of fuck-you money, Ingves and his research staff should probably be focusing entirely on the alternative form for eKrona: electronic banknotes. The Riksbank refers to this option as value-based eKrona. Unlike register-based eKrona, a value-based eKrona would possess a very special feature; anonymity. Like physical banknotes, they would be untraceable, only they would be superior to their physical forbears since they would be transferable not only face-to-face but also over the internet. The Swedish public's desire for online economic privacy would be sufficient to generate a positive demand for eKrona—after all, it is the lone product providing said services—thus restoring at least some part of the Riksbank's lost seigniorage.

In his recent speech, Ingves seems tepid on the idea of privacy for the eKrona, blithely writing that "perhaps it could contain some element of anonymity." Here's a message for him (and all those other central bankers who will eventually be in Ingves's position). "Perhaps" isn't good enough. Without a differentiating feature like anonymity, eKrona will never gain any acceptance among a public that already has decent private bank digital money. And so the Riksbank will only continue on its path to losing its wellspring of fuck you money and the independence it buys. Anonymous digital money or bust.

Small steps, not a large leap, towards less black money & more digital money

 We are more than thirty days into Narendra Modi's demonetization campaign, and while many of the commentators I follow say that it is admirable of Modi to try to reduce the role of black money (wealth held by tax-evaders and criminals) and increase digital money adoption, most say that demonetization is not the way to go about it.

In short, the idea behind Modi's demonetization is to require everyone who owns old 1000 and 500 rupee notes to bring them to a bank before year-end for conversion into new banknotes or to be deposited into an account. By forcing Indians to re-familiarize themselves with dormant accounts, or open new ones, the architects of the plan hope that India's reliance on cash as a medium of exchange will be reduced. Any amounts above the ceiling require proper documentation. Those who own large amounts of cash for undocumented reasons, either because they are evading taxes or engaging in criminal behaviour, will therefore be unable to make the switch, their money expiring worthless by year's end. Having been taught a lesson, they may choose to permanently move some of their operations into the official sector.

Kaushik Basu, World Bank chief economist from 2012-2016, is particularly pessimistic about the policy, noting that while he agrees with the Reserve Bank of India's estimate that the economy will probably grow at 7.1% in 2016-17, from 7.6% estimated earlier, he expects a "huge drop" in the economy next year. "Money works like blood," says Basu, invoking one of the Physiocrat's classic analogies of the economy to the human body.

I certainly agree with Basu's use of the money-as-blood analogy, but my hunch is that temporary media of exchange will spring up to take the at least some of the space heretofore occupied by Modi's demonetized banknotes. My mental model for understanding demonetization is the Irish bank strike of 1970. For six months banks were shuttered, Irish citizens entirely cut off from their bank accounts. Cheques could not be deposited, nor could the central bank use the branch banking system as a means to get paper money into the economy.

India can cope without cash for a few days. In 1970, Irish banks closed for six month: the economy did just fine. https://t.co/TB8n53wqal pic.twitter.com/qXcw3EEc9v

— JP Koning (@jp_koning) November 14, 2016

Rather than suffering a huge blow, the Irish economy continued to function as it did before. Into the void vacated by banks and cash, post-dated cheques emerged as a the economy's blood, its circulating medium of exchange, with pub owners acting as informal credit evaluators.

Like Ireland in 1970, India suddenly finds itself deprived of a large portion of its money. In the place of 1000 and 500 rupee notes I expect informal credit to take some of its place, the effects on the economy therefore not being as devastating as Basu hints. See for instance this:

While many commentators are already declaring the demonetization to be a success or a failure, we won't have a good sense of this for several years. What sort of data should we be evaluating along the way? One of the effects we'd expect to see in a successful policy is a long-term reduction in the usage of cash, both as licit users of banknotes are diverted into the banking system and illicit users, burned by the forced switch out of old 1000 and 500 rupee notes, migrate out of the underground economy into the official economy. This should be reflected in data on India's currency in circulation, an attractive indicator in that is simple, accurate, not subject to revision, and comes out on a weekly basis. You can download the data here under the section 'Reserve money'.

The chart below shows the number of rupee banknotes outstanding going back to 2001. Prior to the demonetization, cash had been growing at a rate of 14-15% per year, as illustrated by the blue trend line. Since then you can see that there has been a huge collapse in quantity outstanding as Indians queue to deposit their cash in the banking system. At the same time, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) hasn't printed enough new 500 and 2000 rupee notes to meet demand.

Cash in circulation will inevitably rebound in 2017 as the RBI catches up to demand by printing new rupees. If cash in circulation jumps back to the pre-demonetization level of ~18 trillion rupees and proceeds to readopt its growth path of 14-15%, than the demonetization will have failed to generate the desired effect. Despite suffering through queues and a relatively sluggish period of aggregate demand, Indians will have returned to their old habits, the whole demonetization campaign being a waste of time and effort.

But if cash in circulation only retraces part of the rebound, say rising to 16 trillion rupees by mid- 2017 (it is currently at ~10 trillion), and then sets out on a new and lower growth path (say 12-13%), then it will have achieved at least some of the desired effect. A new growth path starting from a lower level would imply that the demonetization has been successful in modifying the behaviour of licit cash users (i.e. converted them into digital money users) while driving illicit users of cash into the official economy.

My hunch is that of these two possibilities, the second is more likely: India will see a reduction in the growth path of rupee banknotes starting from a lower plateau. That being said, I find myself sharing many of the worries that Basu and other commentators have. Such a large and aggressive demonetization is a risky way to achieve the twin goals of broadening India's official economy and increase electronic money use. In order to catch people by surprise, much collateral damage must be inflicted, including time wasted in lineups and trades that go unconsummated due to a lack of cash (informal credit as in the case of Ireland not being able to completely fill the void). Suyash Rai makes a convincing argument that a demonetization of this size intrudes on property rights and rule of law.

Despite the chaos it has created, I still feel that the demonetization will make India at least a bit better off than before. However, other nations with large underground economies and low digital money uptake should be wary of copying India's example, waiting at least three or four years to gauge the final outcome. Rather than Modi's risky shock-and-awe approach, a better way to solve the problem is through a series of small and gradual measures. One of these steps might include implementing the approach Kaushik Basu writes about in his 2011 paper Why, for a Class of Bribes, the Act of Giving a Bribe should be Treated as Legal. See my post here for a full explanation.

Here's another incremental maneuver. Instead of imposing a short period of time for switching out of a limited quantity of 1000 and 500 rupee notes, why not allow three or four years for unlimited amounts of notes to be converted—but design the new notes to be 40% larger than the demonetized ones, as Peter Garber suggests, thus making it harder for Indians to store and handle cash?

Another step would be to copy Sweden which, thanks to several policies enacted over the last decade or so, is the only nation in the world with declining cash in circulation. One reason: retailers are required to use certified cash registers that prevent cash-induced tax gas. The Swedes have also adopted tax policies that encourage reporting of activities that typically remain in the unofficial economy, as I explain here. I also recently learnt from Miles Kimball that the Riksbank, Sweden's central bank, privatized the banknote distribution system in the 2000s, the effect being to end the subsidization of note transportation. If banks must bear the true (and higher) cost of moving notes around India, then this will be passed onto their customers, who in turn will react by switching into cheaper digital alternatives. I plan to write about this next week.

The advantage of many incremental steps towards increased digital money usage and a smaller underground economy is that should one step go bad, the blast radius will be small. One large Modi-style step might get you there faster, but if it goes awry, it risks upending the entire effort.

Aggressive demonetizations

Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised Indians today by announcing that India's highest denomination notes, the 500 and 1000 rupee, will cease to be legal tender. On first blush, India seems to be enacting Ken Rogoff's idea of cutting down on criminality and tax evasion by phasing out high-denomination notes, which I recently discussed here.

But this isn't the case. Rather than removing the Rs. 500, the Reserve Bank of India is replacing it with a new bill. Furthermore, it will also be issuing a Rs. 2000 note, a new highest denomination note. What India is doing is enacting what I'll call an aggressive demonetization. I'd argue that this is an alternative (though not mutually exclusive) idea to Rogoff's. Both schemes are intended to create a logistical nightmare for money launderers; but whereas Rogoff's entails altering the denomination structure of banknotes to get this effect, Modi's aggressive demonetization keeps that structure intact while using note redemption and re-issuance as its lever.

Demonetizations are usually non-aggressive drawn-out affairs. For instance, when Canada announced that it would withdraw its $1000 note, it gave Canadians an eternal window to bring them in for redemption. The $1000 remains legal tender in Canada, meaning that it can be used to discharge any debt. As another example, take the euro. The introduction of the euro meant an end to all the national European currencies. While each of these currencies lost legal tender status in 2002, many enjoy an unlimited time frame for conversion into euros, including the Deutsche mark and Belgian franc. See below:

India's demonetization is an aggressive one because legal tender status is to be removed immediately and the time limit for redemption is incredibly tight and scripted. Here is Modi's announcement:

All details on the announcements made today can be found here. https://t.co/UoiCjCyupV #IndiaFightsCorruption pic.twitter.com/WKpgsdTcjg

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 8, 2016

To summarize, Indians have just a few weeks to exchange old notes for new ones at banks or post offices. Proof of ID is required and switches are limited to Rs 4000, around US$60. There is no size limit for directly depositing old notes in bank of post office accounts. But of course, this means that the depositor's identity will be known by the bank and transactions will be traceable. Deposits can be made at banks until the end of the year. After that date, the central bank will exchange old notes until March 31, 2017, although this will require some sort of declaration of origin.

The point of all this is to suss out anyone with large amounts of cash that has been earned from dubious sources. Say you've got one million paper rupees, worth around US$15,000. If you've got the receipts to show why you have that much cash, then you can safely bring it to the bank. But if you don't, you'll have to get rid of it as quick as you can by spending it, say on gold (or any other good). However, this will be an incredibly difficult task given the fact that there will be many other Indians trying to spend their undocumented Rs. 1000 and Rs. 500 notes on gold at that very same time, and only a limited number of gold dealers willing to accept them. After all, any gold dealer who accepts notes now inherits the same problem: what to do with newly-demonetized banknotes. Any gold dealer who starts to bring in larger-than-normal amounts of paper money to their bank for redemption will surely face questions. To compensate for this risk, gold dealers will either impose a large penalty on cash payments or they'll stop accepting cash altogether.

Some undocumented rupees will no doubt be successful in evading Modi's aggressive demonetization, but large quantities will be left stranded. Significant damage will have been dealt to anyone working in the underground economy.

As Tony Yates points out, the most aggressive demonetization in history was probably Saddam Hussein's recall of the Swiss dinar in 1993. Swiss dinars were Iraqi banknotes printed on high quality paper whereas dinars printed after the 1992 U.S. invasion were issued on shoddy and easily counterfeitable material. On May 5, Saddam announced that all Swiss dinars had to be turned into the central bank for an equivalent amount of post-war currency over a tiny six day exchange period. He then proceeded to close the border, preventing Kurds and other foreigners from making the switch. Huge amounts of currency was left stranded, although unlike the Indian situation it was foreigners, not criminals/tax evaders, who were the target. (I went into the Iraq story here. The Burmese kyat and North Korean won demonetizations of 1985 and 1999 were also quite awful, see here.)

If you think Modi's strategy is new, or confined to developing nations, think again. A few years ago, Sweden carried out out a (somewhat less) aggressive demonetization in order to catch illicit cash users. In 2012, the Riksbank announced that all  1000 krona banknotes without foil strips were to be declared invalid by the end of 2013 (each 1000 krona note is worth around $110). Until December 31, 2013, Swedes were permitted to get rid of 1000 krona notes by either using them to buy stuff or depositing them at a bank. To tighten the noose, no anonymous conversions of old notes into existing notes were permitted. Swedes had to have bank accounts, and therefore had to forgo their anonymity, in order to rid themselves of old currency.

Anyone who's seen Breaking Bad knows that laundering money takes time and patience. A Swedish criminal with ten million dollars worth of high denomination krona was suddenly faced with a significant problem; how to get this stash back into the legitimate economy within 400 or so days.

How tough was this challenge? We know that at the start of 2013 there were fourteen million 1,000 krona notes in circulation (worth 14 billion SEK, or US$1.6 billion). After the expiry date, the Riksbank noted that there were still some three million 1,000 krona notes that had not been redeemed, worth around $330 million. This gives a rough indication of the value of banknotes left stranded by criminals and tax evaders, around 25% of all notes outstanding.

After the December 31, 2013 deadline, the Riksbank itself offered to redeem invalid banknotes (it still does), albeit for a 100 krona fee. However, criminal and tax evaders have no doubt steered clear of this offer as the declaration form includes the following question:

Sweden is the only country in the world in which cash holdings are in decline. Might this have had something to do with the damage inflicted by the Riksbank's 2013 demonetization on the psyche of participants in the underground economy?

So let's compare the advantages of Modi's aggressive demonetization to Rogoff's abolition of high denomination notes. If an aggressive demonetization is chosen, then a central bank gets to enjoy high profits, or seigniorage, since it continues to issue an extended range of banknotes, unlike Rogoff's abolition. The more float, or 0% cash liabilities that remain outstanding, the more interest the central bank will earn on its bond portfolio. The central bank also earns significant earnings from 'breakage.' All illegitimate banknotes that never get redeemed are recognized as a one-time unusual gain on the central bank's statement of income. Finally, people engaging in legal activities who enjoy the anonymity afforded by high denomination notes still get to use them; they don't under Rogoff's abolition.

Unfortunately, an aggressive demonetization can only be effective for a little while. It's hard to see why people won't quickly re-adopt the highest denomination note as a medium for evading taxes and engaging in illicit activity. In response, the central bank will have to enact an followup demonetizations every few years, but of course the underground economy will do its best to anticipate these by moving into low-denomination notes or foreign paper whenever it suspects something is afoot.

To create a logistical nightmare for money launderers, maybe Peter Garber's idea beats Rogoff's abolition and Modi's demonetization?:

"Why not simply increase the physical dimensions of high-denomination notes without jumping through the flaming hoop of elimination? Before 1929, U.S. currency was 40 percent physically larger than it is now. Restoring that size or making it even larger would instantly work the wonders of decades of inflation. The iron law for subverting illicit economies: a percentage increase in physical note size is equivalent to the same percentage increase in the price level."