
Sweden is close to becoming a cashless economy - sohkamyung
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41095004
======
DINKDINK
"The cashless society – which more accurately should be called the bank-
payments society... is a utopia where money cannot leave – or even exist –
outside the banking system, but can only be transferred from bank to bank."

-"In praise of cash"

[https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-
is...](https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is-good-will-
be-lost)

~~~
justboxing
I don't get 'cashless economy'. In addition to what you've quoted i.e.

> is a utopia where money cannot leave – or even exist – outside the banking
> system, but can only be transferred from bank to bank.

How do people in a cashless economy pay for stuff that demands discretion, and
that which they don't want documented or traced back to them?

Example: Buying weed or drugs or underage alcohol, maintaining mistresses or
paying for sexual services or anything else that is either a social taboo or
is downright illegal? Are you telling me that everyone in Sweden is a 100% law
abiding, obedient 'good' citizen and hence they don't have a need to be able
to transact from time to time using a relatively discreet currency = cash ?

~~~
flatline
As much as I like to harp on Bitcoin, this really is its primary market. Most
of these things are grey or black market to begin with.

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dredmorbius
The war on cash: Banks, governments, credit card companies and fintech
evangelists all want us to believe a cashless future is inevitable and good.
But this isn't a frictionless utopia says Brett Scott, and it's time to fight
back

[http://thelongandshort.org/society/war-on-
cash](http://thelongandshort.org/society/war-on-cash)

HN (About a year ago):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12325843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12325843)

Top comment:

 _Banning cash is such a monumentally bad idea its a miracle of modern
propaganda that a single person is willing to even consider it. From negative
interest rates to ubiquitous tracking of your every move and purchase (by
stores, banks, governments, and whoever else they choose to share the
information with), to the total paralysis society would face from any sort of
blackout or network disruption, to limitless technical vulnerability by
hackers, eliminating cash is truly one of the worst ideas ever conceived. Its
bad enough that the government enforces a legal monopoly on currency.
Extending that monopoly to digital-only currency is a huge step in the wrong
direction for business, commerce, and freedom._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12326166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12326166)

------
ekianjo
If the authorities are out to get you, they can just block your bank accounts
in such countries and you are only left with your eyes to cry. Cashless
societies take power away from individuals.

~~~
EGreg
Except if the cashless currency is on a decentralized blockchain ;-)

~~~
tw1010
That only works if you have access to electronics, which homeless people might
not.

~~~
hndamien
Well, they can receive without electronics.

~~~
EGreg
Why is this downvoted? That is true, people can receive credit cards that are
backed by companies such as BitPay.

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middleclick
For the privacy conscious people, cashless is something I hope is not the norm
everywhere. There are still places I am hesitant to use cards.

~~~
ekianjo
Japan is pretty good in that regard. They love cash, and you can't even pay
everywhere with cards even if you have one.

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jimmywanger
This is awful. The predecessor to some massive government control.

I simply do not trust every monetary transaction to be logged and tracked, as
I know about structuring laws
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring))
and civil forfeiture.

Plus, if an economy goes cashless, they can easily have negative interest
rates and such other financial games. No thanks, I'd rather pay for things
with real money.

~~~
honestlyreally
> real money

Posit that most of society doesn't understand how money is created and
destroyed. "Real money" is a falsehood as far as most human beings see it.

Cashless has many benefits, watching this phenomenon play out it my home
country (quite sure we have more cashless then Sverige), why should typical
cash businesses like hairdressers get huge tax benefits from being cash only
over the business next door?

Its undeniable that some businesses gain huge advantage from avoiding cards.

If you have a problem with taxation then address that with the powers that be
rather than supporting those who sidestep the law at the expense of everyone
else.

~~~
gragas
The problem isn't taxation. The problem is Orwellian control over yet another
major part of everyday life.

~~~
trapperkeeper74
Exactly. If a corporate-government complex wants to "starve" cryptocurrencies
and untracked assets while maximizing financial intelligence gathering for a
myriad of purposes, they can eliminate physical currency and make sure the
banks are as walled-gardens as possible. Control to track more of what
consumers do for the benefit of the elite under false promises like
"convenience" and FUD like "black money."

------
apsec112
I got robbed going to work this morning. I fortunately had some cash saved at
home, but in a cashless economy, what would I do? I can't use credit cards,
since the robber stole those, and I had to cancel them all to stop fraudulent
purchases. I can't use payment apps or digital wallets, since the robber stole
my phone. Would I just not be able to buy anything, until I got new cards and
a new phone, however many weeks later?

~~~
caryhartline
The natural reaction to that is that at least you didn't actually lose any
money. If you were carrying around cash then that cash would be gone forever.

It may be the case that people need to carry around cards like they are cash.
That is, to keep a card at home or in a bank box that's tied to some other
account with emergency funds.

It does say something terrible about our current bank system that nearly
everything takes a least day if not a week to process, but keeping around cash
won't change that.

------
oculusthrift
Japan is the opposite. Basically a cash only society. In my time there i
really enjoyed it. It's nice to know that no one knows what you're buying. You
are also much more aware of what you're spending

~~~
toomanybeersies
> You are also much more aware of what you're spending

I disagree that you are more aware of what you're spending with cash.

I am more aware of how much I'm spending on what when I use my card, since I
now have a list of transactions and locations. With cash, unless I keep
receipts, or write down what I bought, I don't know what I spend my money on
or where I spent it. I only know how much I spent.

~~~
oculusthrift
this isn't infallible but this psychology PHD researcher disagrees:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCujWv7Mc8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCujWv7Mc8o)

~~~
toomanybeersies
Well I guess my comment is an anecdote, not everyone is the same.

I can track better what I'm spending with a card, which means that I can plan
my spending better.

~~~
oculusthrift
fair enough. as long as you dont generalize your experience as a diligent
person to the average person. (and i don't generalize the average persons
experience to everyone)

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mixmastamyk
Back in the nineties I thought it would be utopia, but after all the
government overreach I've changed my tune and try to use cash as much as
possible.

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lathiat
Australia is going along this path also. It's not quite as far as here, but
ability to pay with card including contactless even for small transactions at
smaller merchants is pretty common. Day to day I probably use cash about once
a month on average.

~~~
sitharus
Come to New Zealand, I haven't used cash this year. Everyone takes cards,
though contactless isn't popular with merchants due to unregulated interchange
fees.

~~~
__alias
Only reason I ever get cash out is to buy weed, honestly.

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jpindar
Yet another thing that doesn't work without electricity and a network
connection of some kind.

I bet there are some hurricane survivors recently who are glad they had cash.

------
thinkpad20
The article mentions that even "homeless people promoting charity magazines"
use cards, but I really wonder how the homeless population, or others who
typically make money through cash such as buskers and street performers, fare
in a cashless world. Having a credit card requires a bank account at the
minimum, and generally being "plugged in" to the system, where disadvantaged
people rarely are. Of course, Sweden's welfare state is far more developed
than the US, but the overall global trend in this direction is troubling.

~~~
dagw
In Sweden there is a widespread system called Swish that lets you connect your
mobile number to your bank account and people can send money to you via an
app. I've seen buskers and street performers (as well and charity and church
collections) ask for money that way.

------
myegorov
An aside... I had a hard time using my (US issued) Mastercard in small town
Sweden earlier this year. The cashiers would photocopy my passport before
processing the payment.

~~~
johansch
Does the card have an EMV chip? An absence of that may have been the trigger.

~~~
myegorov
yes, it was a card with a chip

~~~
johansch
Then it was probably a case of your bank being overly suspicious of foreign
transactions. (I have seen this happen many times while waiting in line here
in Sweden, while some foreign person is in front of me. I think it's safe to
say that most banks' fraud protection systems need improvement.)

------
johannkaupen
Recently I was wondering how you would teach kids how to deal with money if
there is no money you can see. There is a lot of research about the effects of
seeing the money you spend and how this helps to assess how much you are
actually spending. (No, your Spreadsheets don't help really.)

So if you don't learn this (to me one of the strongest and still most
important) lesson as a kid, which effect will it have on your spending
behavior in the long term?

------
illuminati1911
In Finland it's the same thing if not even further already. Using cash is
considered to be really weird these days.

Right now I live in China and it's really interesting what happened here.
Everything was done with cash 5 years ago and you couldn't use international
cards anywhere, but now everything is paid with (apps) alipay/wechat. Even
beggars use them.

------
atlih
This is guaranteed to cause a banking system and currency meltdown in the long
run, not to mention the negative effect of rampant malinvestment in the
economy. Since banks everywhere are free to issue unlimited "Bank money"
through credit cards and other means and have nothing holding them back except
the risk of the ATM's being unable to service the demand for real currency.
The lower the demand for real currency the more "Bank money" can be created.
Now lets see with 0% demand for real currency how much "Bank money" will be
created.

------
djrogers
> how did the Nordic nation get so far ahead of the rest of us?

Honest question - is a cashless society empirically better than one in which
you have the option of using cash?

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jamesblonde
In Sweden we have a new verb - 'to swish'. I will 'swish' you 50 kronor later.
Swish is an app for micropayments. Everybody (except a few old people) uses
it. It is even on windows phone! I was at a 2 km long yard sale at the
weekend. Everybody took swish and almost everybody paid by swish. Swish is
coming - and it's not back by Nike, but by the banks (Swish is owned by all
the banks here).

~~~
Yetanfou
Not everyone uses Swish, there are some holdouts. I'm one of them actually,
for a variety of reasons. First of all I do not trust mobile devices enough to
allow them access to financial resources. It is not clear where the liability
lies in case of erroneous or fraudulent transactions. I'm also a holdout
against the cashless society as I do not see the need for my financial
transactions to be visible/traceable/mineable/monetizable by 'interested
parties'.

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sitepodmatt
I stayed at swedish hotel the other month passing through Stockholm. In the
hours I had to pass I had a few beers at the bar, nearly every Swedish person
I noticed was paying with some yellow/orange card, didn't see anyone pay with
cash. I don't think the minimum fee is such a problem given that's everything
seems so expensive in Sweden - water / food / juice (and of course beer...)

~~~
Ambroos
If Sweden is like Belgium, minimum fees don't exist. Transaction costs go down
a lot to practically nothing for small transactions.

~~~
baal80spam
The same in Poland actually. I don't think there is a minimum payment for
contactless.

------
Sacho
The article doesn't really argument whether it's just the high-tech cities,
like Stockholm, or the whole of Sweden that is ready to become a "cashless
economy". How could you write such an article and not examine the situation in
the rural areas?

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sanyoso
sweden will be the first european country facing gov. negative interest rate.
Mr. Draghi already wanted to introduce it for regular people and cash was the
only reason he wasn't able to do this.

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tomcam
Would the citizens of a country like Cyprus welcome this kind of control over
their own money?

Edit: Corrected spelling of country adjacent to Greece, replacing name of city
adjacent to Disneyland's hometown

~~~
jpelecanos
Do you mean Cyprus? I agree that due to their 2012-2013 financial crisis [0],
I also assume that Cypriots would be wary of this.

[0]
[http://www.lse.ac.uk/fmg/dp/specialPapers/PDF/SP232-Final.pd...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/fmg/dp/specialPapers/PDF/SP232-Final.pdf)

~~~
tomcam
Ugh, yes, the country, not the city next to Anaheim. Thank you.

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jpelecanos
Is the _Forsvarets Radioanstalt_ (FRA) or National Defence Radio Establishment
involved in implementing Sweden's cashless society?

