Transforming the cash cycle with a "simple box"

Standardization has the potential to transform industries and, in the process, many aspects of our lives.

Take the simple shipping container. Since it was conceived by a visionary US trucking company owner in the mid-1950s as a standard, reusable, and secure way of transporting all manner of goods, the logistics sector has become a model for efficiency. It’s a transformation that we have all benefited from in terms of lower prices, speedier deliveries, and access to markets that would have been unimaginable in earlier eras. Today, about 250 million of these standardized boxes are in motion around the world each year.

These containers are now the most prominent mode of transport, and, later the cash industry took a similar approach. A parallel revolution had taken place to transform the cash industry, with another standardized box at its heart and benefits that could be seen across the whole cash cycle.

As always with a new industry standard, though, such gains will only flow with the right blend of innovation, leadership, and industry-wide collaboration. The good news is that for the cash industry, in many regions the market dynamics seem aligned for that to succeed.

In recent years, those involved in the cash cycle have encountered various challenges. These include fast-changing demand for banknotes, increasing costs associated with cash processing, and a growing need to enhance sustainability throughout the cash cycle.

These challenges are being addressed on several fronts:

• through investment in higher levels of automation
• by creating much better visibility into the cash cycle
• by establishing greater resilience and responsiveness across the cash supply chain
• and with the adoption of more sustainable approaches and product materials.

The new way of packaging and transporting cash in these advanced and standardized boxes is one of the many methods of cash packaging and transporting. It’s dependent on the customers and businesses on how they want to handle the cash processing and how they see the need for optimization in efficiency. 
 
However, the end-to-end observation of the packaging and transportation processes in the cash cycle has already inspired a wave of innovation i.e. the NotaTray^® Ecosystem. This would go a long way to support the new world of cash: the standardization of the way most of the cash is handled, stacked, stored, and transported.

Today, at several key points in the cycle, manual and wasteful processes prevail – with significant consequences. ‘Hands-on cash’ processes – for example, when notes are fed into counting machines or boxed up for transportation – represent challenges to cash security. The packing and repacking of notes in different types of boxes, bags, cartons, and containers contributes to inefficiency and a lack of visibility throughout the cycle. And the wrapping of bundles of notes in single-use plastic may be convenient, but it is far from environmentally sound.

Standardization as a game-changer

That’s where the creation of a standardized box for processing and transporting cash, supported by an increasingly digitalized ecosystem, has the potential to play a revolutionary role – just as a “simple box” did in the logistics sector.

As an industry pioneer, G+D has been working with an array of cash cycle players and customers to bring the benefits of standardization to the cash cycle. The NotaTray^® Ecosystem envisions a new industry-wide standard centered around a banknote tray, designed for both automation and efficient manual handling.

By utilizing bio-based and recycled materials, the NotaTrays have successfully reduced their carbon footprint by more than 50% in CO2. This shift towards sustainable resources significantly diminishes the negative environmental impact on cash handling operations, promoting eco-friendly practices.

For cash cycle players, the NotaTray^® Ecosystem can deliver a set of transformational benefits:

• Processing cash more efficiently by enabling the automation of loading, filling, and packing
• High levels of sustainability across the entire cash handling cycle, with a shift from the packaging of banknotes with single-use plastics to the holding of loose banknotes in reusable, interchangeable, robust trays.
• Possibility of visibility into the entire cash cycle as a result of every tray having a digital twin that can be tracked from a central console, showing the position and contents of each tray
• Tightened physical security, as a result of reduced hands-on cash and enhanced traceability
• Eased pressures on scarce resources, with NotaTray^®-facilitated automation freeing up operations staff and infrastructure.
• Greater resilience, as efficiency is optimized and digitization leads to risk mitigation for the future disruptions, driving more automation for the volatile volume of cash and readiness to ever- changing market scenarios.  
   

Individually, central banks, commercial banks, and CITs can all enjoy these benefits. But with wider adoption of the NotaTray^® Ecosystem is likely to create a ‘multiplier effect’: the more collaboration across the cash cycle, the steeper the contribution to the overall efficiency and sustainability gains. 

The NotaTray^® Ecosystem in action

The experience of adopters of the NotaTray^® Ecosystem certainly demonstrates those broad benefits:

MNB x NotaTray^®: Helping Hungary’s central bank achieve a leaner, more secure, and sustainable cash processing cycle

Hungary’s central bank, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB), has been a long-term user of high-speed processing machines from G+D. But with a view to making cash as sustainable, secure, resilient, and efficient as possible, in 2022 it decided to integrate G+D’s NotaTray^®® Ecosystem into its existing automation process, using standardized NotaTrays for inbound deliveries of loose banknotes by commercial cash cycle partners and their subsequent transport, storage, and processing.

The introduction of NotaTrays significantly impacted the environment by eliminating the need for strapping paper or plastic wrapping for banknotes, thus increasing processing efficiency and security. “With NotaTrays, we can save hundreds of meters of plastic foil every year.” - DR. ANIKÓ BÓDI-SCHUBERT, Head of the Cash Issuance Strategic Department at MNB.

Previously, the MNB packed banknotes in various single-use containers, requiring time-consuming manual unpacking, which also raised security concerns and generated substantial waste. By transitioning to reusable NotaTray^® containers, the MNB is not only advancing toward its sustainability goals but also enhancing operational efficiency and security. To fully leverage these benefits, gaining support from key stakeholders in the cash cycle, including commercial banks and cash-in-transit providers, was crucial. 
“We process about 18 trillion Hungarian forints. In the last year alone, cash levels rose 32%. NotaTrays helped us respond to this level of growth, while enhancing efficiency, security, and sustainability.” - ROBERT JUHOS, CEO of Criterion Holding

National Westminster Bank x NotaTray^®: Facilitating the automation of high¬-speed processing and enhanced sustainability

With a goal of significantly increasing banknote processing efficiency through automation, the UK’s National Westminster Bank (NatWest) first embraced standardized NotaTrays back in 2017 when it upgraded its high-end banknote processing system to G+D’s BPS^® M5 systems, complete with NotaTray^® loading modules.

As well as relieving operators from repetitive manual tasks, the 20-pocket BPS^® M5 when combined with NotaTray^® also increased the speed of processing by 10%, allowing NatWest to attain an effective average throughput of up to 100,000 banknotes per hour for each BPS^® M5 – a major value-add in a cash center that is dealing with mixed banknote qualities.  

The NotaTray^® Ecosystem alleviates operator workload by using an automatic loading module that maintains optimal machine loading for maximum efficiency. Additionally, in collaboration with NatWest and CIT partner LOOMIS UK, the ecosystem is transforming the cash cycle by replacing single-use plastic bags with continually recirculated NotaTrays.

GSA/LOOMIS x NotaTray^®: Turning the idea of “cash processing without manual intervention” into reality

GSA Geldservice, Austria’s leading cash management company, and LOOMIS Austria, a specialist in cash handling, joined forces to bring greater efficiency to their joint cash processing activities through NotaTray^®-facilitated automation. Since 2018, LOOMIS has been delivering the deposits it collects to GSA in sealed NotaTrays, replacing the bundles of banknotes that were previously packed and shipped, thereby eliminating the unpacking and preparation processes at GSA. Furthermore, LOOMIS only needs to do deposit balancing and does not need to sort the banknotes.

By using standard NotaTrays, GSA and LOOMIS have significantly enhanced efficiency, security, and sustainability in cash handling. The trays standardize the process, eliminating the need for manual intervention by removing steps like unpacking and the manual insertion of banknotes into the G+D BPS^® system. 
This approach, similar to how shipping containers revolutionized logistics, could be a game-changer in the cash industry with proper collaboration among partners.