Hello! Kiah here. Welcome to Fintech Takes Banking, my weekly newsletter where I highlight things I think are interesting or important for bankers and the surrounding environs. 

The impetus for this newsletter came from some facts that Chris Colson shared with me at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. I first learned about the existence of tactile currency from this episode of 99% Invisible. 

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Show Me the Money

As a broken credit card points person, it is my strong preference to swipe a card for every purchase I make: every bunch of bananas at the grocery store, every concession stand, every coffee. 

And yet, I can’t fully exorcise cash from my life. 

I mostly carry cash when I travel, so I can leave small-bill tips — hotel housekeeping, airport rides, networking happy hours — although in May, I used up all my spare cash to attend the cash-heavy Laotian New Year Festival and tip the guy who used his ATV to free my car that was stuck in the mud. 

In that way, I am exactly like the average U.S. consumer that used cash for five to seven payments a month, mostly for small-value payments under $25, according to the Federal Reserve Services’ 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice report. As the third most popular payment instrument, cash isn’t dead. But it’s a distant third at 14% of all payments, and used mostly at grocery stores and fast-food locations. Cash is declining as the preferred in-person payment instrument, and the Fed found that two-thirds of cash payments are made by an individual who prefers to pay a different way. However, cash might have a "floor" of use, given its consistent popularity in the years after the pandemic.

The Fed found that nearly 80% of consumers kept cash on their person, a finding that has been consistent since 2018. They also kept about $300 of cash stored elsewhere, acting as a store of value. I think of this as the stack of bills in the sock drawer that’s used for field trips, birthday cards or tooth fairy visits — the one that a spouse or child may or may not know exists and may or may not help themselves to on occasion. 

There’s not usually a lot of news on the cash front year over year. Cryptocurrency and stablecoins are the hottest payment methods and technologies at the moment. That makes it even more unusual for 2026 to be the year of a major — and long overdue — fiat currency update: tactile currency.

Money Talks

2026 should see a new $10 bill that, for the first time, will be designed to be accessible to the blind and visually impaired — an initiative that has been almost two decades in the making. 

Today, the U.S. is "e pluribus unum" — and not in a good way — when it comes to accessible currency among the 180 or so countries that issue paper currency. By 1995, accessibility features on currency around the world included variable-size banknotes, use of large numerals, different colors, special shaped patterns, visible and invisible engraved markings, watermarks and machine-readable features, according to an article about accessible currency. Tactile marks appear on the Angola Kwanza, the Bahraini Dinar, the Brazilian Real, the Maldives Rufiyaa and the Zambian Kwacha, according to a list from Blind Coin Collector, as well as more populous western nations like the Canadian and Australian dollar. 

By comparison, U.S. dollar bills are the same size and thickness; the different values are denoted by numeral images. It is also the only country in the world that uses common colors on the front and back of the bills, according to the 1995 article. In 2008, the American Council of the Blind sued the Treasury, arguing that paper money in the United States discriminated against blind people because of its uniform size and shape. Before the District and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the Treasury had argued that it would be too burdensome to make distinguishable bills. This argument evidently carried little weight given that the U.S. was "practically alone in the world in failing to produce bills the blind can differentiate," according to a 2008 article in The New York Times. 

The Treasury lost the cases, and so in the second half of 2008, it started its work. Since then, the Treasury has dutifully provided two updates a year related to its progress, which included commissioning a study of how to make more accessible currency, roping in experts involved in paper and ink production, the "international banknote community," and cash handling organizations and cash machine manufacturers and prototyping different accessibility features. 

That was 2008. It is 2026. It has taken an unbelievably long time to issue these notes. One reason why was the realization in 2016 that the bills needed to incorporate tech advances to impede counterfeiting technologies. The research and development necessary to create these new features pushed the redesign past its expected 2020 target date. By 2018, the Treasury was testing them through high-speed currency processing and handling machines and conducting critical manufacturing testing to make sure these bills could be produced. The Treasury said it took seven machines to print these test notes in 2019 but encountered additional delays in manufacturability testing due to "equipment unavailability, repairs, and currency production requirements."

New Money

As of this March, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had completed integrating a raised tactile feature, which they call RTFs, to the $10 bill. They’re calling it the Catalyst. 

"The Catalyst $10 note with RTF continues to be on schedule for production in 2026," the March report stated. The $50 bill will follow in 2028, the $20 in 2030, the $5 in 2032 and the $100 in 2034. The $1 bill will remain unchanged. 

The $10 is a widely circulated bill but not used in high-value transactions, making it useful to serve as the first redesigned bills. The $50 was seen in the Treasury’s risk assessments as being more vulnerable to counterfeiting than the $20. The $20 is popular with ATMs and retail; its launch was pushed back to allow more time for tech and machine upgrades and validation.

The staggered rollout hopefully gives companies time to update devices like ATMs, self-checkouts, vending machines and back-office counters, as well as train staff and educate consumers, according to an article from CPI. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing said there are more than 10 million banknote equipment machines around the world that process U.S. currency. It worked with equipment manufacturers to test machine readiness and acceptance determinations.

"For businesses that handle cash every day, that matters because a new bill does not simply change what staff see at the register. It affects how notes are authenticated, how equipment reads them, how exceptions are handled, and how confidently teams can manage a period in which old and new versions circulate together," wrote Lisa-Marie Kujovic at Cashmaster International. "That is where the real operational impact tends to sit."

New bills from the BEP go to the regional Federal Reserve Banks that circulate them to commercial banks in the region, which then make their way into broad circulation. CPI noted that it can take weeks to months before consumers see the bills. Old, existing notes remain valid and will be gradually exchanged out.

I didn’t try the hardest to find an image of the Catalyst $10, but I also didn’t see any images in the research I did for this piece. The BEP releases note designs publicly between six and eight months ahead of time, balancing cash handling and public education against aiding counterfeiting. It doesn’t release note concepts. 

While the tactile currency rollout has taken almost two decades, the Treasury has used technology to make existing currency more useful to the blind. It has distributed more than 100,000 currency readers and developed a mobile app that allows smartphones and other similar devices to function as a currency reader that has been downloaded more than 200,000 times.

Big Money

The highest currency denomination that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing issues currently is the $100, but that hasn’t always been the case.

The highest denomination ever printed in the United States was the $100,000 note, Payments Expert Chris Colson told me when I visited the Atlanta Fed. The $100,000 bill was commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and features President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. About 42,000 bills were printed between 1934 and 1935, with a total face value of about $4.2 billion. This note was not put into circulation, but was used in exchange within the Federal Reserve System. Most were destroyed in the late 1960s.

"Instead of sending 100,000 one-dollar bills, they sent these," he said.

Source: Atlanta Fed Instagram

The highest U.S. denomination to go into circulation was the $10,000 bill. The U.S. also used to print $500, $1,000 and $5,000 denominations, all of which it stopped circulating in 1969, Chris said. He added there are fewer than 350 $10,000 bills in circulation, and that their value to collectors can be as high as $140,000. But they are still valid currency; if a customer took the $10,000 bill to a bank, it would be valued at par. 

This is all to say the United States does not issue a $250 banknote — yet. But late last month, The Washington Post broke the story that the Trump administration urged the BEP to design a $250 bill featuring the president’s portrait. It also reported that U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach, a political appointee, provided a mock-up design of the note in August and September 2025.

Federal law currently allows only deceased people to appear on bills. Congress had contemplated introducing legislation that would allow Trump to appear on a $250 bill to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary, but it hadn’t advanced. 

The article said the bureau staff, including the director of the printing bureau, explained to Beach "that there were legal and procedural obstacles to producing the note and that it would take years longer than they envisioned." The appointees were dismissive.

"These guys think you can just print something overnight and it’s going to work in an ATM. It’s just crazy," said one of the employees in the Post article. "It takes years and years and years to produce these notes so they are reliable for the public."

It remains to be seen if anything happens with the $250 bill — apparently it involves an act of Congress, so don’t hold your breath. But even if that did happen, the tactile $10 has underlined that designing and issuing new bills is an arduous, deliberate and slow process. This particular buck might never start, never mind stop.

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FROM THE VAULT

What’s on my mind and filling my time:

🕺🏻ON PROM?!: The Wall Street Journal published an article about high school seniors with multimillion-dollar name, image and likeness deals spending thousands on senior prom. On one hand: YOLO! On the other hand: Please tell that for every $1 spent on PROM, you invested $1. (Side note: I went as Elizabeth Bennett for senior prom with a thrifted dress and made my then-boyfriend dress up as Darcy, not even a little embarrassed.)

🥵 Why I heat train: Bloomberg News analyzed the World Cup schedules of the teams to figure out the team with the worst and best schedule based on expected playing temperatures and whether a stadium will be air-conditioned. Tunisia has the toughest, Uzbekistan the best. Heat really strains the body and alters performance, which is why I try to spend at least two days a week heat training.

🎙️On Bank Nerd Corner: Catherine and I are always closing (credits) as we discuss the 1992 film "Glengarry Glen Ross" with movie buff Brian Love, who also heads banking and fintech search at Travillian Group. We discuss the film's parallels to financial scams and MLMs and wonder what, specifically, people like about this movie.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts on this piece.
- Kiah