
Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies - mtmail
http://news.yahoo.com/nordic-countries-point-way-cashless-societies-143338597--sector.html
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sveme
Maybe it is a mild paranoia attack kicking in, but I find the trend to a
cashless society very troublesome. I'm doing all I can to avoid being tracked
on the web, using AdBlock and Ghostery, among other things, yet the privacy
implications of going cashless I'm rarely considering. Cash is anonymous;
cards are perfect trackers.

Both your tracks and your most intimate preferences on the web and in real
life are perfectly transparent to anyone with access to the transaction
database. And I have no idea what kind of protections there are against
governmental access to these databases. It is weird that the privacy
implications of cashless are so rarely discussed - everyone just seems to be
touting the great benefits of cashless all the time.

~~~
hga
Agreed. I use cash for everything I can, checks when I can't (local payments),
and credit cards only for purchases over the web, where it can't be easily
avoided, and one does need, in the US at least, to maintain a credit record.
This is primarily to avoid fraud with stolen info, and secondly that mild
paranoia we share. If I had a Pocky addiction, no one would know outside my
family ^_^.

~~~
tzs
Why checks for non-cash local payments? They aren't really much better than
credit cards for privacy, are they? They also come with some significant risks
[1].

[1] [http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html](http://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html)

~~~
Swizec
They are also virtually nonexistent in Europe.

From Wikipedia: "In most European countries, cheques are now rarely used, even
for third party payments. In these countries, it is standard practice for
businesses to publish their bank details on invoices, to facilitate the
receipt of payments by giro."

"In Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Scandinavia, cheques have
almost completely vanished in favour of direct bank transfers and electronic
payments. "

"In Finland, banks stopped issuing personal cheques in about 1993 in favour of
giro systems, which are now almost exclusively electronically initiated either
via internet banking or payment machines located at banks and shopping malls."

"In Poland cheques were withdrawn from use in 2006"

"Since 2001, businesses in the United Kingdom have made more electronic
payments than cheque payments."

The story seems to be similar in Asia and Oceania. According to the Wikipedia
article on cheques, North America is pretty much the only place where they are
still taken seriously.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque#Modern_era](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque#Modern_era)

------
MrJagil
"while some unemployed people selling street magazines now also accept
electronic payments."

This was hard to grasp when I saw it IRL for the first time. My local candy
store and deli[0] both accept Mobile Pay and it's a strange thing to witness.
Imagine the NYC delis, usually owned by immigrants and minorities who couldn't
care less, suddenly be on the frontier of adoption of a cashless system. It's
that user friendly. And the nature of the businesses (selling cigarette
singles and imported sodas) mean you do have a suspicion of it being off the
books..

Another anecdote, I just started a record label[1] and for our first show, we
accepted cash and Mobile Pay. We're small, it was in a private apartment, but
so many people do not bring cash anymore we basically _had_ to accept MP.

[0] Hvis nogen fra Danmark læser dette, så er det Palmen ved skt. hans torv,
og kiosken ved Blågårds plads... Sikkert mange flere. [1]
[https://scalatapes.bandcamp.com/](https://scalatapes.bandcamp.com/)

~~~
lobster_johnson
In the US, Square [1] seems very popular among small stores, like coffee shops
and, yes, candy stores. Seems like it's great for low-volume stuff. A few days
ago I was buying a piece of vintage furniture from a private seller via
Krrb.com, and when I showed up, she said I could pay with either PayPal,
Square or Venmo.

[1] [https://squareup.com](https://squareup.com)

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Numberwang
This was a bit of a surprise for me when I moved to Ireland and later the UK
two years ago.

In Sweden I wouldn't use bills and coins sometimes for months. Suddenly I have
had to get used to carrying these around again, and having to pay fees when
you pay with cards etc.

I'm looking forward for the world to go cashless, and think this will happen
very fast.

~~~
newaccountfool
What fees do you have to pay in the UK when using a card?

~~~
threedaymonk
As a customer, there aren't many circumstances. The only one that springs to
mind is when buying airline tickets with a credit card (but not a debit card).

Where it makes more of a difference, though, is that the fee charged to the
merchant is a sufficient disincentive that it's pretty common for small shops
and bars to refuse card payments under £10. This is even true of the new(ish)
contactless payments that only work up to £20 and which were touted as
replacing cash.

------
newaccountfool
Its probablly ok if you live in Norway and your not poor and have a good
credit rating, other wise your going to have to go with a prepaid solution
that is full of transaction costs. The same with traveling to these countries.

At DEFCON last year I took two bank cards, that I had loaded with funds...big
mistake transactions for ATMS and using POS systems were very high.

I don't think this is a good idea if you are forced to go with a card to go
with everyday transactions.

~~~
elektronaut
Debit cards are the norm here in Norway. I pay 275 NOK/year for mine, with
zero transaction fees on everyday usage.

~~~
newaccountfool
You have to pay for a Debit Card? What's the reason for this?

~~~
gst
You pay for debit and credit cards in most European countries. One reason is
probably that the fees paid by the merchants for card processing are much
lower than in the US. So while a bank in the US is happy to give you a free
credit card in the US, because it knows that it gets the money back via the
fees paid from the merchants, a bank in Europe won't be able to break even
with that approach.

~~~
newaccountfool
I'm from the UK and have never had to pay anything for opening up an account
and using a debit card.

~~~
Kiro
So why are you talking about prepaid solutions? That's not how it worked when
I lived in the UK. I had a normal debit card tied to my bank account, just as
in the nordic countries. Nothing to do with credit rating either.

------
sitharus
Here in New Zealand over 60% of retail payments are done using cards,
especially as the local EFTPOS system is very low fee compared to credit card.
I can't recall the last time I had to use cash. There's still a few small
cash-only vendors, but mostly those without a fixed location as mobile EFTPOS
terminals cost more to run.

It's very convenient, there's no need to keep receipts to record my spending.
No cheques means no chequebook to balance. Of course it does make spending
more traceable but given the police need a court order to get banking records
I'm not too worried currently. Vendors can track you using the number if their
POS records it, but it's hard to get a POS approved so most people use a
sealed terminal with a serial interface to connect to the POS.

Cash isn't going away any time soon, but it's just a pain to carry around.

------
ArkyBeagle
Going cashless smacks of dystopianism. We seem to presume that anyone "off the
books" is up to no good. Some are up to no good, but many are simply trying to
survive.

Perhaps I'd think differently if we had no unemployment.

~~~
higherpurpose
I wonder if now the governments there consider people using cash "suspicious",
just like the US gov considers not having a Facebook account suspicious, or
how the Spanish Court in a recent case considered encrypting your e-mail end
to end as "suspicious".

~~~
silb
This is true in Norway.

Merchants are required by law to report cash purchases over a certain amount
to the tax authorities.

~~~
sliverstorm
The same has been true for cash withdraws from the bank over a certain amount,
for decades. "Suspicious" isn't quite the right word, as there are plenty of
legitimate reasons. But the cost (reviewing a small number of large withdraws)
vs. probability of detection is good.

~~~
waps
The scary part is how low that amount is. It's something like 1000 euro/day
and 3000 euro/week. There's also a yearly value. It's been going down over
time (by a lot, used to be 5000 euro/day only when the euro was introduced).

------
cheald
Completely aside from the privacy issues, I rather bemoan the decline of cash,
for the very simple reason that handling physical currency makes it much
harder to spend carelessly.

It's too easy to swipe your card and receive an item. It's a lot harder to
fork over $483.71 in tangible, handle-able dollars. After my wife and I
analyzed our spending habits, we found that we were bleeding money
specifically because of the tremendous number of small - $5 here, $10 there -
transactions. These completely fly under your mental radar when you're paying
with a card.

We've since switched to a cash budget, where we withdraw the money we need for
the next two weeks for various things (groceries, hobbies, entertainment) and
spend exclusively out of that. If we're out and about and want something and
don't have the cash on us, we don't buy it. When I open up my wallet and see
that I only have $X left of the grocery budget, I consider whether I really
need that thing I just put into my cart. Internet purchases still get made on
a card, but we "pay" for them with cash from the budget into a pool that we
withdraw from the next period to refull the budget. We've become much more
sensitive to sales, discounts, and smart shopping - and all because we have
the continual feedback loop of physical cash. Our monthly margin has
substantially improved as a direct result, and we've been able to make
substantial progress on all our unsecured debt - we should be free of it this
year. There's more to it than just cash, but it's really about being aware
what you're spending and finding ways to make sure you only spend what you
have; cashless transactions practically encourage you to be unaware of what
you have and what you can afford.

For a society that is utterly crippled by debt, and in a culture that is
practically begging us to spend money every time we turn around, it seems like
the last thing we need is to go cashless. It's convenient, it's easy, it's
fast...and that's a problem.

I'm not saying that cashless payment methods are bad. I love them. Paying for
things on my phone Google Wallet is magical. Amazon has completely transformed
how I buy stuff. There are lots of really great things about cashless
economies, but for anyone that is less than perfectly disciplined, it's a very
sharp two-edged sword.

------
pmalynin
In Canada we have Interac debit cards and everyone is happy, I don't even
remember the last time I used cash to pay for something...

------
thiagof
Here in Brazil I almost don't use cash. The credit card is accepted
everywhere, even by the beach's vendor.

------
roncohen
I believe the trend in the nordics is largely driven by the Dankort and
similar
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dankort](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dankort))
which is a debit card that is free to get and use for consumers. Merchants pay
an annual fee depending on their transaction volume and they are not allowed
to pass the cost on to the consumer. It doubles as a VISA which is neat when
we go abroad.

An interesting data point is that every single taxis here is happy to take
your credit card. I was surprised to learn that I was unable to pay with my
VISA in many taxis in the UK and USA.

~~~
Kenji
"they are not allowed to pass the cost on to the consumer"

Haha, that's funny. The merchant's whole income is from the customer, there's
no way not to pass it on to the customer, just to conceal better the fact that
they're passing it on.

~~~
notatoad
obviously they pass the cost on to the customer, but not directly. they can't
charge one price for cash and a different price for card.

~~~
innguest
Which means they have to pass the cost on to both kinds of customer.

~~~
waps
If you're a business customer in a bank, and you bring in cash on a regular
basis, the bank will actually charge you a percentage for doing that.

From a discussion I had with a merchant, that rate is quite high, especially
for small change. The value he gave for small change was 7%. That's a lot more
expensive than the worst credit card charges, except for really small amounts.

------
snissn
Cashless societies like credit cards and mobile payments

Not cashless societies like Star Trek

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crimsonalucard
This makes quantitative easing so much easier!

