An important role of the Federal Reserve is to maintain the quality and integrity of U.S. currency. The Cash Product Office has learned through its Diary of Consumer Payment Choice research that cash continues to play a key role in consumer spending. We’ve found that even if cash use were to decline 2½ percent over the next 20 years, the Federal Reserve would still be counting 20 billion notes. For the 2015 annual report, What We’ve Learned…and why it matters, we understand that Reserve Banks will continue to process and count an extremely high volume of cash. In serving financial institutions and the public, we’ve learned that it’s essential to continuously innovate our cash processing technologies for optimal productivity and efficiency.