
Sweden Tries to Halt Its March to Total Cashlessness - leonagano
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-11/sweden-tries-to-halt-total-cashlessness-with-lawmaker-proposal
======
OskarS
Here's a fun fact: I'm Swedish and have lived in Sweden my entire life, and
I'm not entirely sure what my currency looks like. They changed almost all the
coins and notes a few years back, after I had personally pretty much totally
gone cash-less.

Without looking it up: I'm fairly certain the 1 kr coin is copper and looks
sort-of like the half-krona coin used to. There's a new 2 kr coin, and they
redesigned the 5 kr coin. At least one of them is, like, brass-looking, I
think.

The twenty-kronor note is (I think) blue:ish and has Astrid Lindgren on it. I
know Ingmar Bergman's on one one of the other notes, either the 100 kr one or
the 200 kr one. I think the 200 kr one is, like, greenish. But I couldn't be
sure. I don't know any of the other people on the notes, and am at best vague
on what colors they are.

If you gave me a reasonably convincing fake 50 kr bank-note but with the wrong
person on it, I would have no way of knowing.

~~~
21
This is why I like polymer money. I have yet to hear of any fake plastic notes
out there. One documentary said that buying that special plastic film is
harder than getting military explosives.

I did hear about people passing paper printed fake notes instead of polymer
ones, but you have to be at a whole new level of carelessness to be fooled by
this one.

~~~
amelius
How about bleaching low-value notes, and printing high-value designs on top of
them?

~~~
MartinMcGirk
In the UK, bank notes are different sizes depending on their value. So that
goes a long way towards stopping that kind of thing.

~~~
amelius
Isn't it true that if a banknote is torn in two, you can go to the bank and
have it replaced?

~~~
asdsa5325
That's true in America too. (You have to have both halves in your possession,
of course).

~~~
JoshTriplett
Anecdotally, you can do so without both halves, as long as the piece you have
is clearly the majority of the bill.

I don't know either the relevant law or common institutional policies
regarding that, though.

~~~
extra88
Banks might accept such more-than-half bills as a courtesy to their customers
but ultimately it's the US Treasury that will take them and redeem them. If
you have a bunch of partially destroyed notes, you should go to them.

[http://bep.gov/services/currencyredemption.html](http://bep.gov/services/currencyredemption.html)

[https://www.npr.org/2017/07/07/535920428/the-office-where-
mu...](https://www.npr.org/2017/07/07/535920428/the-office-where-mutilated-
money-gets-repaired)

------
SOLAR_FIELDS
As an expat living in Sweden, who does not have a Swedish bank account, Sweden
has a few steps left to make changes if it wants to be completely cashless but
still not be unfriendly to foreign visitors.

Most of the friction I run into is related to the banks themselves - sometimes
it's quite impossible to do business with them unless you have a Swedish bank
card (or personal number). Examples of things I currently can't do without the
above:

1\. Refill my train/bus card online or buy train/bus tickets online

2\. Use Swish, the Swedish half-answer between cash and cards. This is the
bank-to-bank transfer protocol which is only supported by Swedish banks. It is
quite convenient if you have it, you can enter in a 10-digit number which many
storefronts display next to the register and it otherwise works very much like
Apple Pay Cash (which is not supported here yet unfortunately)

3\. Have a phone plan. I have to use prepaid and cannot top-up online. I have
to always go buy top-up receipts from Pressbyrån

4\. Buy from several various mom-and-pop shops that also only for some reason
have card machines that support Swedish cards. They also always have a Swish
number as mentioned above.

#2 and #4 are usually the most problematic. When I go out with people from
Sweden and someone covers something I inevitably end up withdrawing cash as
the path of least resistance.

#1 and #3 are related to a popular payment processor in Nordic countries known
as DIBS, who currently likes to reject foreign cards but I suspect will
eventually support them. I'm hoping Sweden's banks and other payment systems
finish integrating with the rest of the world before eliminating cash entirely
so as to not alienate outsiders.

~~~
AnssiH
> 4\. Buy from several various mom-and-pop shops that also only for some
> reason have card machines that support Swedish cards.

That seems unusual to me, Swedish debit cards are AFAIK just VISA/Mastercard
cards so I'd think those should be accepted. I've never had any problems with
my VISA debit/credit cards in Sweden but I guess I could've been lucky.

Do you have any more information about this? Or do you have a non-VISA/MC
card?

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Typical American Visa credit card from HugeAmericanBank with no foreign
exchange fee. I suspect it is related to the payment processor as hinted
above.

It’s somewhat rare and I see it only in smaller stores. Like a few days ago I
was in a mom and pop kebab shop in a small town and it didn’t work.

I’ve had similar problems on RyanAir planes in Europe (but for some reason
whoever does payments for EasyJet, SAS, Norwegian, or British Airways I have
no issues with)

~~~
AnssiH
Just realized one possible cause - maybe your card isn't chip-and-pin like
Swedish and other European cards?

I guess some terminals/processors smaller places use might not be prepared to
(or are configured not to) accept non-chip-and-pin cards. That would also
explain why I haven't seen any issues - my cards are all chip-and-pin.

------
edtruji
I live in Puerto Rico, and the hurricane María, throw the electrical grid to
the floor, literally. Yes suddenly 3 million US citizens can’t use electronic
payment because the hurracaine take down the whole telecommunication network.

The majors of the cities were given some satellite phones by FEMA. No traffic
lights around the island ( still today some not working), the roads where
blocked by electric pole on the floor. The store looting happen the first ~2
weeks. The complete island goes in ONLY CASH MODE, for around ~3 months.

But yeah, What possibly could go wrong?

I hate to use cash, I like my credit card rewards, but after María, that idea
100% cashless, u got to think about it twice.

~~~
trumped
Hopefully you won't get hit bad again this year, because the season is already
coming...

Cash is also good for privacy purposes because businesses can't buy your
purchase history when you use cash.

------
reaperducer
The article has the banks moaning that handling cash will cost them kr100
million per year. Fees that will be passed on to account holders.

I'm curious if Swedish banks passed on that kr100 million savings to their
account holders when they stopped taking cash in the first place.

Reminds me of when ATMs first became widespread in the U.S. in the late 70's.
The banks kept saying they were the wave of the future, and would save people
tons of money because tellers wouldn't be needed anymore.

And yet bank fees went up anyway. So much for saving people money!

~~~
lotsofpulp
How do you know that the fees didn't go up as much as they would have without
the ATMs?

There also seems to be sufficient competition to allow for multiple banks
offering free cash withdrawals around the US and/or the world and free
checking accounts, in exchange for certain account balances or direct deposit
minimums.

I've never paid a cent to a bank in fees, and they mail checks for free to my
vendors when I ask them to, and I can schedule it, and I can instantly
transfer money to whoever I want online via Zelle, or use Paypal/Venmo via
ACH. Life seems better than what I saw my parents deal with.

~~~
reaperducer
_How do you know that the fees didn 't go up as much as they would have
without the ATMs?_

I don't. I know the banks stated that fees would go down, and they didn't.
Sounds like a lie to me.

~~~
lotsofpulp
My point is they could have in real terms, just not nominal, although I'm not
familiar with the fees you're talking about in the first place so perhaps I
can't really compare.

------
Tijdreiziger
I have personally been moving to a more cash-based lifestyle after I realized
that I used my card so often that my payment history could be used to
construct a reasonable map of my location history.

~~~
psergeant
I’m generally pretty privacy conscious, but not about my location data. What
worries you about that?

~~~
Yetanfou
It is not just your location data which is collected and profiled but also
your purchase history. The combination of these two is more than enough to
make a detailed profile of who you are (as in 'what your habits are', they
already know your name and address etc.) and whether you have anything
'interesting' on the go (visited the hospital, went to the drug store, bought
more booze than your health care insurer thinks good for their bottom line,
etc.). Payment processors sell this data to the likes of Facebook and Google
who use it to make a more detailed profile. If you're fine with this, no
problem, just use that bank card/Swish/Apple|Google|Samsung|whatever Pay. If
you're not, cash is one of the ways of limiting your exposure to these
practices.

~~~
Tijdreiziger
> Payment processors sell this data to the likes of Facebook and Google

Source?

~~~
Yetanfou
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-
tracks-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-tracks-your-
credit-card-purchases-and-connects-them-to-its-online-profile-of-you/)

"Of course, Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for
a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers
with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits
aren’t purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for
marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70
percent of all credit and debit card purchases."

------
forapurpose
I don't understand some private persons' interest in going 'cashless', other
than it seems cool and high-tech. Cash is very easy to use, and there's not
much to gain from cashlessness, except for businesses and those who want to
track you.

More importantly, it can't be overstated that in a world where tracking of
human activities has become perhaps the greatest threat to freedom (for
example, in China) and to democracy (for example, in advanced democratic
countries), cash provides an amazing, simple solution to tracking of your
economic activities, at least the in-person transactions. For a trivial amount
of effort, you eliminate a major source of information about yourself. It's
much easier than using Tor or setting up a VPN, and it's more effective.

tangentially; People are struggling to develop an electronic currency that
provides reliable, anonymous, universally accepted transactions using all the
tools of a computer. Imagine if the new requirement was, 'now do it using a
piece of paper'. Cash is an amazing technology, even if we're all very
accustomed to it.

~~~
kemayo
Basically, sure, cash is fairly easy to use... but cashless is _easier_.
Cashless is "I waved my watch at the register".

Cash is more stuff to carry. A wallet which just contains a few cards is tiny;
if you want it to contain a reasonable amount of money in bills and coins as
well, it's bulky.

Making change is a hassle -- ever had trouble paying because the shop can't
make change for your bill? I have.

Not disputing the privacy downsides of cashless. But for most people's day-to-
day life, it's a trade-off they're happy to make.

~~~
Animats
_but cashless is easier. Cashless is "I waved my watch at the register"._

No, it's not. I keep seeing people futzing with their phone, or using some
combination of affinity card, credit card, and EBT card that takes forever to
process. Then there's "hosted POS in the cloud", where it takes five seconds
for each transaction step as it goes out to some overloaded server. The credit
card terminal and the POS terminal can get out of sync, so you get a false
"Chip malfunction" message if you put in your card too soon.

Here in Silicon Valley, the contactless card thing seems to have come and
gone. I see "No Apple Pay" and "No Google Pay" labels taped over the RF card
reader at many retailers.

~~~
avarun
That may be the situation in Silicon Valley, but try going to somewhere like
London, where you're in the minority if you're not paying with a contactless
credit card (let alone Apple Pay). A table of 4 splitting their bill at a
restaurant just involves each person tapping their card once when the waiter
brings the card reader, and then walking out.

~~~
walshemj
Must be a cheap restaurant the limit for wireless is low.

------
staticelf
I am Swedish and have started to use cash as my primary way of spending money.
By doing so, I've found that I am more reluctant to purchase expensive items
and that it also will lower shops tracking ability.

I really _hate_ the new standard of cashless. It's so stupid and a lot of
people are defending it without realizing potential consequences this can
have.

If a store doesn't provide an ability to pay with cash, then I am most likely
not going to purchase anything from that store.

------
djrogers
This is obviously cultural, but the very idea of a bank that refuses to handle
cash somehow feels antithetical to the very purpose of personal banking. I
can't imagine a bank in the US doing that, nor can I imagine hoq fast their
customers would revolt!

~~~
lotsofpulp
There are quite a few online US banks that don't handle cash. Ally, Schwab are
just a couple names that come to mind. They offer very competitive savings
rates and perks.

~~~
djrogers
Both of those banks do in fact handle cash - through ATMs. Note in the
article, one of the options banks could employ for handling cash would be
ATMs, indicating that not all banks do...

~~~
lotsofpulp
I meant they handle cash in the literal sense, with their hands. You have to
mail them a check or money order, but either way all of their money exists on
a ledger, not in notes and coins. I guess I should say I don't know for sure,
but I see no reason they would want or need to.

------
icebraining
Seems like a reasonable proposal. And 100M Kr is about 10M €, which isn't
really that much for a whole country.

------
noja
The handling fee for credit cards is crazy high (more than 1%!), I can't
believe that handling cash is more expensive.

~~~
vixen99
And a UK Mastercard used abroad (in the EU) attracts (nearly) 3% commission on
purchases.

~~~
nimish
That's a foreign transaction fee. Good cards will not do this.

The actual interchange fee in the EU is closer to 0.3%.

~~~
noja
How is the interchange fee different from the merchant fee? Can I take cards
for 0.3%?

~~~
nimish
The interchange fee is what's paid between banks.

Your payment processor (Stripe, Paypal, Square, WorldPay etc) essentially act
as middlemen who occasionally provide extra value.

Depending on your volume and their product offering you could get interchange
+ pricing.

------
sunstone
Oh right, let's go entirely to electronic payments. What could possibly go
wrong? Who thought this was a good idea?

------
XalvinX
I know I'm new here but I wish people wouldn't link to bloomberg and other
sites (including the NYT) that only let you read X number of "free articles"
per month. I know how to get around it, but it is a bother. Anyone else feel
this way?

Anyways, I think the idea of cashlessness is not only scary but very
impractical. What about, for instance, farmer's markets, yard sales, buying
something like a newspaper or pack of gum, etc? Do people really use cards for
purchases of a few cents, and do farmers and (let's just say) lemonade stands
actually take charge cards? Stupid. And, needless to say to a bunch of
hackers, Orwellian as f __k.

~~~
grzm
> _" I know I'm new here but I wish people wouldn't link to bloomberg and
> other sites (including the NYT) that only let you read X number of "free
> articles" per month. I know how to get around it, but it is a bother. Anyone
> else feel this way?"_

Welcome to HN!

This is a FAQ:

> _" Are paywalls ok?"_

> _" It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds."_

> _" In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other
> users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off
> topic."_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

~~~
XalvinX
>Welcome to HN!

Thank you. :-)

------
mnm1
I've been contemplating switching to cash because it's easier to spend less,
even when accounting for cash back, air miles, etc. I think this is why banks
and businesses are pushing so strongly for cash less transactions only. People
simply spend more this way because they are less aware of their spending. And
if people use credit and don't pay things off every month, then there's
interest too on top of the extra spending. Of course this is worth spending
millions lobbying for, enacting, and enforcing. People are the only ones
losing out on their money and privacy while companies win.

------
paul7986
Sounds good to me. I use cash a few times a year.. mostly to pay older people
in my family.

I recently got rid of the need to have a wallet. Just carry a few cards in a
wallet phone case and use Apple Pay about 50% of the time.

~~~
MisterTea
Good citizen. Now sit back while we mine all of your purchases for suspicious
data in which to hang you with.

------
oldcynic
Ireland tried cashless in the 70s with a 6 month bank strike.

When cash ran out they survived by using undated cheques (often re-signed
multiple times as they were passed around like notes), and when cheques ran
out IOUs and local trust.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/we-can-all-
get-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/we-can-all-get-by-quite-
well-without-banks-ireland-managed-to-survive-without-them-10382975.html)

~~~
gaius
_Others take the example of the Irish bank strike as evidence that much of
what banks do is a “socially useless activity”._

Presumably the author of this piece also feels that since newspapers could be
replaced by bloggers they are also socially useless ...?

~~~
oldcynic
Perhaps. I just skimmed for coverage of the events without a care for their
social and political stance. The Independent itself is pretty consistently
centrist in outlook.

------
kickling
The state bank is also looking into creating a digital currency (not
necessarily crypto) that should not be controlled by the private banks.

[https://archive.li/20171221075726/https://www.ft.com/content...](https://archive.li/20171221075726/https://www.ft.com/content/0e37795c-ab33-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122)

------
jernfrost
A bit similar situation in Norway. In fact I was not quite sure what our money
looks like at the moment because some of our bills changed. I just had some
bills as an emergency stash for a long time, that I had to check if was still
valid money.

We've even started paying street sellers and beggars electronically now.
Because even they realize that almost nobody is carrying cash anymore.

~~~
Bakary
In some Chinese cities it's common for beggars to carry a Zhifubao/Alipay or
Wechat pay QR-code

------
stealthmodeclan
OT: I wonder why Bloomberg is Bloomberg LP instead of Bloomberg LLC.

~~~
aphextron
I would assume to allow Bloomberg to maintain personal control over his
namesake should he be forced out of the company. An LP reserves the right to
dissolve the company in the event of a partner leaving.

~~~
apaprocki
Also, keep in mind LLCs didn't practically exist when the company was created.
The Wyoming LLC-as-partnership-passthrough ruling didn't happen until 1988.
Other states didn't start to pass LLC laws until 1990 onward.

------
psergeant
I’ve been in the UK about ten days, and spent less than £10 of the cash I
withdrew on the same day, while having spent well in excess of £500 retail

~~~
leonagano
I live in the UK. Sometimes I spend less than £100/cash in a month

~~~
falsedan
I forget my PIN every 8-12 months and have to wait for a letter from my bank
before I can withdraw cash from an ATM

------
falcon620
There's been a quite generally raised awareness of the importance of civil
resilience here in Sweden the past two years. The perceived threath of a
Russian invasion (or perhaps more likely network-based sabotage) has been the
cathalyst of this.

Being a "prepper" has gone from being seen as border-line psychotic behavior
to "being a responsibile citizen". As long as you don't go over-board and try
to prep for more than 4-7 days lack of electricity/water/food - then you're
still seen as suspicious. Small steps.

There was also this campaign just a week or two ago - every household received
a leaflet telling them to prepare for any incidents that stop public services:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/21/sweden-
distrib...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/21/sweden-distributes-
be-prepared-for-war-cyber-terror-attack-leaflet-to-every-home)

This stuff used to be standard operating procedure when I grew up in the
70s/80s - all this stuff was printed in the annual phone directories that
everyone receieved. After Soviet collapsed we stopped doing it though.

There's also been an unusually large number of outages of networked systems in
Sweden the past two years, all over the place. Things like ATC systems, banks,
media/cable tv distribution systems. Perhaps the official, public explanations
are true (typically some kind of "human error" or "software update problem").
I suspect there's an adversary who is not very shy.

~~~
lainga
How popular has the Norwegian series Okkupert been among Swedes? It seems war
is weighing heavily on the mind of all the Scandinavian countries since about
2014 (except for Finland, of course, who have never stopped thinking of it).

~~~
Svip
The prospect of war weighs very little in Denmark, for the record. There was
quite a shock in Denmark, when Sweden announced its 'war survival guide' a few
days ago. There seems to be no indication that the Danish government is going
to do the same, or anything similar. The argument being that Denmark is in
NATO (Sweden is not).

~~~
bjourne
Lol! I was interviewed about it by a Dutch TV team a few weeks ago and I had
no idea what they were talking about! I got it in the mail last week, a little
brochure called "What do to if war or crisis comes." I threw it in the trash
and refused to take it seriously.

------
scottybowl
Cashless societies should never exist - it would be far too easy for rogue
governments to turn someone's life off

~~~
Dayshine
Oh come now, how do you get hold of enough cash to be immune? Keep 6 months
living costs in cash in your house!?

Also, if they're turning off your bank accounts, they're turning off your
utilities too... And you'll miss your car insurance payments, so you can't
drive either.

~~~
omgtehlion
> keep 6 months living costs in cash

Well, I do. Just in case, yknow. But anyway I use cards daily...

