Health of Cash White Paper

Overview

Every year, the Health of Cash study asked a contrarian question: in a world racing toward digital and mobile payments, why does cash refuse to disappear?

The answer, year after year, was that cash matters. In 2018, 73 percent of consumers still used it regularly, even as payment options multiplied. My job was to turn that finding, and the dozens of data points behind it, into a report people would actually read.

The challenge

A research report is the easiest thing in the world to make boring. Tables, percentages, a wall of findings. Most people skim the cover and move on.

The Health of Cash had a real story to tell, that choice, trust, and access keep cash alive, but the data couldn't carry that story on its own. It needed editorial direction, a clear narrative, and a layout that made a hundred statistics feel like a single argument.

The work

I creative directed and produced the piece end to end, shaping the research into a long-form report with a through-line, not just a findings dump. The narrative built around three ideas the data kept proving: people want choice and often choose cash, the digital rise reflects evolution rather than the end of cash, and cash is the only payment method available to everyone, all the time. Each section earned its statistics instead of stacking them.

The numbers did the convincing. 92 percent value having multiple ways to pay, yet 81 percent used cash as often or more than the year before. Nine in ten called cash essential for people without a bank account. 94 percent expected to use it in the next six months. The design's job was to make each of those land as a point, not a footnote.

Why it matters

Good content design doesn't decorate data. It gives it an argument. The Health of Cash report took a subject most people assume is settled, cash is dying, and made the case that it isn't, clearly enough that the work earned first place for content at the ATMIA awards.

Proof that editorial craft is brand work too. The discipline carries from a screen flow to a stadium to a hundred-page report.