Shaping the cash cycle of the future

Marc Schwartz, born in 1963 in Paris, is Chairman and CEO of La Monnaie de Paris, the French National Mint. He is also a lecturer in media and cultural economics at Sciences Po, a leading Social Sciences University in Paris.

Marc Schwartz started his career as an Auditor with the National Court of Audit (Cour des comptes) in 1988 and joined the Treasury Department in 1992. He became, in 1997, special advisor to the minister for Economy, Finance and Industry and to the secretary of State for Budget.

He joined the media group France Télévisions in 2000, as CFO, then deputy CEO. In 2010, he became a senior partner with the international audit and consulting firm Forvis-Mazars, in charge of Public Sector and Media. He returned to the Cour des Comptes in 2014 and was appointed Chief of Staff to the minister of Culture in 2017, before joining Monnaie de Paris in 2018.

He holds a BA’s in economics and public finance (Sciences Po), certificates of finance and international finance from the London School of Economics (LSE), a master in corporate finance from Conservatoire national des Arts et métiers (CNAM), and a master of public administration from Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA).

Marc Schwartz is the author of various articles on monetary and financial issues and of two books: The French Financial System (Montchrestien, 1992) and The New Currency War (Odile Jacob, 2025), co-authored with Pr. Christian de Boissieu.

Jim Leroux is the CEO of Pin4, a global leader in cardless cash disbursement solutions, enabling secure, instant, and convenient cash payouts across ATMs and retail partner locations. With a presence spanning 200 countries and a network of over 500k cash pick-up points worldwide, Pin4 empowers businesses, governments, and humanitarian organizations to deliver cash quickly and reliably—even to individuals without payment cards or bank accounts. Jim has been active in fintech for over 30 years as an operator, investor, advisor and attorney, with a focus on new innovations in the payments and fintech industries.

Economist at Banco de España since 1993, with experience in branch operations, securities settlement, and cash management. He worked at Iberclear (Spanish Central Securities Depository) from 2003 to 2015, coordinating connections to Target2 and T2S. Since 2015, back in Banco de España, he has focused on cash operations, serving as Head of the Coins Unit (2018–2020) and currently leading the Cash Policies Division, with direct responsibilities on cash issuance, analysis, statistics, regulation and procedures, management of cash central reserves and distribution of cash among Banco de España dependencies or, through international transports, within and outside the Eurosystem.

Dr. Andrzej Nowak is Head of Open Innovation at SICPA. His current focus includes the future of currency – whether in physical or digital form, privacy-preserving digital trust, fintech, and innovation systems. He contributes to the Bretton Woods Committee working groups on the Future of Finance and on AI, and serves as an expert for Innosuisse, the Swiss innovation agency.

Earlier, Andrzej led an innovation lab at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. There, he defined and put in place new elements of CERN’s 10-year technological horizon, led several Open Source efforts and founded educational initiatives for young scientists and engineers.

Andrzej also held roles in management consulting in private banking, at the chip maker Intel, as a founder of a fintech company, and as an evaluator for the EU Research Executive Agency. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Shaun O’Brien, a Lead Analyst in FedCash Services at the Federal Reserve Financial Services, specializes in researching consumer payment behavior and forecasting cash payment and receipt volumes. He has authored and co-authored numerous papers on payment usage, including the recent "2025 Findings from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice" and several studies on consumer payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. O’Brien began his career at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2011 within Economic Research and transitioned to Federal Reserve Financial Services in 2013

Alejandro Zamora-Pérez is an economist at the European Central Bank and the Chair of the European Research Network on Currency Analysis (EURECA), a central-bank network advancing research on physical currency. His work focuses on the demand for physical currency, access to cash and payment inclusion, and central bank digital currency (CBDC). His publications have been referenced in analyses for the European Parliament, the European Commission, the OECD and European national authorities, and covered by major international media outlets such as the Financial Times, The Economist and CNN.