Payments begin with people.
Argentium advises central banks, industry suppliers, technology providers and card programmes on how money is made, moved and managed, from coin and banknote to card and stablecoin.
The medium changes. The human need stays the same.
People have exchanged value with shells, metal, paper, plastic and code. Every medium has succeeded or failed on the same test: whether it fits how people live, how they trust and how they spend.
We treat payments as a human question before a technical one. We study the behaviour first, so the strategy we shape with you rests on how payments are actually used, and the execution follows from that strategy.
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I
Understand
We start with the people who will use, accept and operate the payment: their habits, their constraints and the assurance they need before they trust it.
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II
Define
We turn that understanding into strategy: the right instrument, partners, economics and regulatory path for your market.
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III
Deliver
We stay through execution, working with your team on suppliers, schemes, technology and launch until the programme is running.
We work in partnership. Our consultants sit alongside your people, share the objective and stay accountable for the result.
From the mint to the ledger.
Our practice began in physical currency, advising on the production, circulation and retirement of notes and coin. We carried that understanding of money into electronic payments and, more recently, into digital assets.
Few advisers work across both. It means we understand the full system: the materials, the logistics, the schemes, the processing and the regulation that sit behind every transaction.
Physical currency
Notes & coinWhere we began. Work across the full life cycle of cash.
- Coin mintingProduction strategy, minting capacity and supplier selection.
- Coin blank productionBlanking, plating and alloy choices for circulation and commemorative coin.
- Banknote productionPrinting, security features and production planning.
- Substrates and materialsPaper, polymer, alloys and the security materials used in notes and coin.
- Secure recycling of obsolete coinWithdrawal, secure destruction and recovery of metal value.
- Currency logistics and turnoverDistribution, recirculation and the planning of currency changeovers.
Electronic payments
Cards & digitalWhere we work today. Strategy through to the technical detail.
- Electronic money institutionsEstablishing, authorising and running an EMI.
- Card schemesScheme membership, relationships and commercial terms, supported by long-standing connections.
- Card issuing and programme managementDesigning, launching and operating card programmes.
- ProcessingProcessor selection, architecture and the technical detail of authorisation and settlement.
- Stablecoin issuanceStructure, reserves, regulation and the route to market.
- Blockchain technologyWhere distributed ledgers add value to a payment, and where they do not.
Trusted on both sides of the system.
Over many years our work has taken us inside the institutions that issue money and the companies that make it move, in markets around the world.
That experience on every side of a transaction is what our clients draw on.
Central banks
Currency strategy, production, circulation and the retirement of obsolete notes and coin.
Industry suppliers
Mints, printers and materials producers across the currency supply chain.
Technology providers
Processors, platforms and infrastructure behind electronic and digital payments.
Card programmes
Issuers and programme managers, from first concept to live operation.
Companies
Businesses entering payments, building an EMI or issuing digital value.
In confidence
We do not publish the names of our clients. Discretion is part of how we work.
Start a conversation.
Tell us briefly what you are working on. A member of our team will reply to you personally.