While retail focuses on digital innovation, omnichannel promotions, and customer loyalty, a silent villain continues to bleed companies’ cash flow: poor cash management. It is estimated that Brazilian retail loses billions of reais annually due to failures, deviations, errors, and inefficiencies related to physical cash flow.
According to the World Bank, over 38% of payments in Brazilian retail are still made in cash—a figure that rises to over 60% in peripheral and rural regions. Despite the rise of PIX and digital wallets, paper money remains an operational reality for thousands of physical stores.
The Global Payments Report 2025 by WorldPay shows that in 2014, cash and cards accounted for 97% of purchases in physical Point of Sale (POS) retail, while digital payments represented only 3%. By 2024, digital payments grew to 38%, while the use of cash and cards fell to 62%. The projection for 2030 indicates that physical cash and cards will remain relevant, with a 47% share in physical POS.
The number of bills in circulation at the end of 2024 was 7.72 billion, the highest volume since 2020. In 2024, only 22% of purchases in Brazil were made in cash, while the rest were made with cards, PIX, and other electronic methods. But although PIX has gained traction, cash remains a relevant part of the daily economy—especially in brick-and-mortar retail segments.
In March 2025, physical cash in circulation reached R$ 349.2 billion, of which R$ 340 billion was in bills and R$ 8.4 billion in coins, according to the Central Bank. ‘It’s not cash itself that poses a risk, but how it is managed. Retail needs to treat cash with the same intelligence and automation applied to digital channels,’ says Hailton Santos, commercial director of Sesami (www.sesami.io), a company that is a reference in effective and innovative solutions for security, productivity, and management in retail, banking, and cash segments.
International studies indicate that cash shrinkage—that is, losses related to cash handling and transportation—represents between 0.3% and 0.7% of annual revenue for retail chains. For a company with R$ 1 billion in revenue, this can mean up to R$ 7 million in annual losses, invisible to the manager’s eyes.
The causes are varied: human errors in counting and closing registers, lack of traceability per operator, unsafe transportation of funds between stores and banks, and unproductive time spent by employees manually handling cash.
Smart, loss-free solutions – Sesami has technologies like smart safes and recyclers that are changing the logic of brick-and-mortar retail. In an automated cash management system, bills and coins are counted and validated automatically, generating a final report with all deposits made throughout the day, optimizing the reconciliation process.
With the smart safe, retailers ensure automatic cash counting, monitor cash volume, and can integrate with cash transport companies. It counts bills, rejects counterfeit notes, and generates reports with deposit data. The smart safe optimizes team time and helps improve cash management.
Cash automation is already standard among major global retailers. In Brazil, large supermarket, fashion, and pharmacy chains have begun this transformation with Sesami—optimizing time, security, and financial performance. ‘Today, the minimum cost for retailers to control cash is around 20% (and can reach 50%). This means that for every R$ 100 they have, R$ 20 is spent to control it. These costs include treasury and cash transportation, for example. These are high costs for an operation in a sector with thin margins,’ says Santos.
Another safe and efficient way to handle cash and eliminate register discrepancies is the closed-loop cash management cycle. It replaces the manual cash register drawer with a system that recycles and protects cash from the moment it leaves the customer’s hand until it reaches the counting center in the back office (backoffice). The customer makes the payment directly on the device and receives their change, if any, automatically, whether in bills and/or coins. The treasury’s task will be collecting the stored cash at the end of the day’s operations.
Benefits through software – All the benefits provided by Sesami’s safes and recyclers are generated from the company’s software, Sesami Enterprise Software, which enables intelligent, real-time management of operations. With its modules, it allows business reports and analysis, data sharing and connectivity, service monitoring and optimization, and end-to-end cash reconciliation.
