Key Points

• European governments are now formally advising citizens to keep physical cash, with Ireland and Sweden issuing national guidance that frames cash as a core element of crisis preparedness.
• Digital payments are increasingly vulnerable to outages, infrastructure failures, and cyber incidents, and global regulators warn that societies relying solely on digital systems face growing systemic risk.
• Frontier AI is accelerating cyber threat capabilities, with the ESRB and IMF cautioning that AI enabled attacks could destabilize financial markets and disrupt electronic payment systems at scale.

In the span of just a few months, two very different European countries — Ireland and Sweden — have issued national guidance urging citizens to keep physical cash on hand in case digital payments fail. That both a highly digital society and a mixed payment economy reached the same conclusion signals a deeper trend: digital fragility is a mainstream security concern. These announcements, coming from senior government officials and central bankers, reflect a growing recognition that electronic payments are vulnerable to outages, cyberattacks, telecom failures, and infrastructure disruptions. Cash, by contrast, remains universally accessible, operationally independent, and resilient under stress.

Ireland’s guidance came first. On 12 June 2026, Tánaiste Simon Harris, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, confirmed that the government is preparing national emergency preparedness advice that will explicitly recommend households keep a reserve of physical cash. The forthcoming advisory will form part of Ireland’s national resilience planning and recognizes that digital payments depend on multiple layers of infrastructure — any of which can fail. The move follows a series of digital payment outages across Europe and aligns with the European Central Bank’s warnings about systemic fragility.

Cash use in Ireland is notably strong and even growing, with the country’s Department of Finance noting uptick in members of the public that use cash in 2025, to 92% from 91%. Ireland also has the highest rate of cash acceptance, according to a European Central Bank survey (What the European Central Bank Just Learned When It Surveyed Companies About Cash), and yet it is far from alone in recognizing the importance of cash to national preparedness.  Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, and others have already recommended to citizens that they keep cash on hand for when emergencies happen, sufficient to last at least 72 hours.

Even the poster child for digital payments has recognized danger in excessive reliance on what is, ultimately, a fragile system. In its Payments Report 2026 released in March, Sweden’s central bank — the Riksbank — issued updated national guidance recommending that every adult keep at least SEK 1,000 in physical cash as part of basic crisis preparedness (Sveriges Riksbank, Payments Report 2026, March 2026, Policy Recommendations Section).

The Riksbank warned that digital payments cannot be guaranteed during power outages, cyber incidents, or disruptions to telecom networks, and in presenting its new guidance, Riksbank officials underscored that its rush toward digital systems has created vulnerability. “We in Sweden have a high level of trust in digital systems. But it also leaves us vulnerable to cyber-attacks and disruptions to the electricity grid and data communications.”

Officials acknowledge that the need to address the issue has grown, as “geopolitical developments are affecting the financial sector and have increased the focus on protecting the payments system against disruptions and external threats.”

Cash is a critical element in strengthening the payment system's resilience, the report concludes, stating that measures to strengthen the functioning of cash and ensuring access to cash services should be implemented as soon as possible.

Taken together, the moves by Ireland and Sweden — two countries at opposite ends of the digital payments spectrum — signal a growing consensus that digital payments, regardless of efficiency, cannot be relied upon as a sole system.

Global Shifts in Mindset & Risk

The decisions by Ireland and Sweden are not isolated anomalies but part of a broader international shift in how governments and central banks think about payment resilience. Across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia, policymakers are increasingly acknowledging that digital payments — however advanced they may be — introduce systemic vulnerabilities that can cascade across sectors during outages or cyber incidents.

This emerging consensus underscores a simple but consequential reality: national resilience depends on maintaining multiple, interoperable payment channels, and cash remains the only universally accessible method that operates independently of digital networks. As digital systems grow more complex and more exposed to disruption, the strategic value of cash logistics infrastructure is becoming clearer to governments worldwide.

Central banks at recent global forums have emphasized the need for redundancy, warning that societies without a functioning cash infrastructure face heightened risks during crises, from natural disasters to geopolitical shocks, risks that seem to be growing.

Over the past two years, disruptions have become more frequent, more complex, and more difficult to resolve, often involving failures across multiple layers of infrastructure at once — cloud platforms, telecom networks, payment processors, and bank systems. Retail chains in Europe and North America have experienced hours long card processing failures; mobile payment platforms have suffered regional blackouts; and several countries have reported incidents where government services were unable to accept digital payments during system maintenance or cyber events. These outages rarely make front page news, but their operational impact is significant: when digital payments fail, commerce stalls immediately, transport systems struggle, and vulnerable populations are disproportionately affected.

The risk landscape is also shifting in ways that make digital only payment systems more exposed than ever.

The European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) has issued one of the clearest official warnings yet about the vulnerability of digital financial infrastructure to AI enabled cyberattacks. In its June 2026 systemic risk communication, the ESRB elevated the EU’s cyber risk level from “elevated” to “severe,” citing the emergence of frontier AI models capable of autonomously probing and exploiting weaknesses in the systems that support electronic payments. The ESRB cautioned that these models are “highly capable in the cybersecurity domain to carry out fully automated cyber-attacks on complex systems, including through vulnerability discovery and the development and weaponization of exploits, thereby fundamentally changing the cyber-threat landscape.” The warning underscores that digital payments are now exposed to a new class of systemic threat—one that can discover vulnerabilities, craft novel exploits, and disrupt critical financial functions at machine speed. (Warning of the European Systemic Risk Board, ESRB, Official Journal of the European Union, June 2026)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has echoed these concerns, warning that AI enabled cyberattacks will be more dangerous and could destabilize financial markets and disrupt core payment functions. In a May 2026 analysis, the IMF noted that frontier AI models dramatically accelerate offensive cyber capabilities, increasing the likelihood of attacks that ripple across institutions and industries (Financial Stability Risks Mount as Artificial Intelligence Fuels Cyberattacks, IMF, May 7, 2026).

The Fund warned that AI driven cyber incidents could “cause funding strains, solvency concerns and disrupt the overall market,” particularly if attackers exploit a single vulnerability shared across multiple financial entities. For now, these risks are tempered by the fact that advanced AI cyber capabilities are not yet widely available, and closed, industry specific financial software is harder to target than open source infrastructure. But these buffers could quickly erode, the IMF warns.

The Road Ahead

The road ahead will require governments to rethink the balance between digital efficiency and systemic resilience. Digital payments have delivered conveniences, but they are also exposed to cyber risks that are growing faster than traditional defenses can adapt. As frontier AI accelerates offensive capabilities and infrastructure becomes more interconnected, the brittleness of digital only systems is becoming impossible to ignore. Policymakers are beginning to confront a structural reality: resilience cannot be retrofitted after a crisis. It must be built into the architecture of national payment systems from the start.

Strengthening cash infrastructure is now part of that architecture. The guidance issued by Ireland and Sweden reflects a broader recognition that societies need multiple, interoperable payment channels — not just for fairness or inclusion, but for national security. Maintaining access to cash, ensuring cash handling capacity, and preserving cash acceptance across the economy are no longer legacy concerns; they are core components of crisis preparedness. As digital systems continue to evolve, the countries that invest in redundancy will be the ones best positioned to withstand outages, cyber incidents, and the emerging risks of an AI driven threat landscape. The challenge for policymakers is not whether to modernize payments, but how to modernize without sacrificing the resilience that only a diversified system can provide.