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I live in Sweden. No one I know uses cash. I haven't had the need for nor used cash for years. Even if headlines often are overblown, this feels particularly mi

I live in Sweden. No one I know uses cash. I haven't had the need for nor used cash for years. Even if headlines often are overblown, this feels particularly misleading, as it implies that there would be some bigger trend. Considering that many people only read headlines, I'd support a movement for becoming more accurate even with headlines. "In Sweden, some worry about the cashless society" would be way more apt.

mrmekon 9y ago
The second sentence corrects the sensational headline: "the small but growing number of Swedes anxious about their country’s rush to embrace a cash-free society." It must be very small. The only person I've ever heard complain about it is... myself. Not for the reasons this article gives, though. I'm more upset about Visa and Mastercard skimming 1% of profit off of the entire country's retail commerce. Maybe if they weren't simultaneously terrible, but they also have unimaginably bad fraud detection, and push their own fraud problems onto local businesses.
- 87812487 9y ago
  I think it is a interesting question. Before using a payment gateway, what is the cost of using cash? It would be covered by tax. If the whole society is abandoning cash, it is effectively meant raising sales tax by X%, where X is transaction cost of each payment. A cashless country should just use the tax money on cash printing factories to cover the cost of transaction.
- imartin2k 9y ago
  I see your point, but I have a slight correction: The EU has regulated the interchange fee, which is since then capped at "0.2% of the transaction value for Visa and Mastercard consumer debit cards" and "0.3% of the transaction value for Visa and Mastercard consumer credit cards." (https://www.adyen.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-eu-interchange-cap https://www.adyen.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-eu...) However, I am not a payment expert, so there might be an additional fee imposed by the credit card networks which I am not aware of? This percentage does seem a bit more reasonable for the services offered by Visa and Mastercard, in my eyes.
  - mrmekon 9y ago
    Well, true, that's somewhat better. But it's the principle of a privately-owned monopoly or oligopoly skimming profits off of a nation's economy that bothers me, not the absolute amount. As the other response to my comment said, cash itself has an overhead cost, too. But that cost is paid to our government at break-even cost, instead of to a private company for profit. If Visa and Mastercard had plenty of competition, it wouldn't be so bad. Swish is nice to have, despite its problems. Maybe we'll get there.
    - imartin2k 9y ago
      Yeah I tried to find the rates that Swish charges to businesses but didn't find them (although didn't look to thoroughly either). But can it really be even below the 0,2% of cap for debit cards?
      - Symbiote 9y ago
        The rates for Danish MobilePay were easy to find [1], and are flat, under 30-75 ears [2] depending on volume. I'd guess that's around 0.5-1%, but I don't have much idea. [1] https://mobilepay.dk/da-dk/erhverv/Pages/mobilepay-myshop.aspx https://mobilepay.dk/da-dk/erhverv/Pages/mobilepay-myshop.as... [2] Well, I say "crowns" in English
      - Annorax 9y ago
        Swish is 1 to 2 SEK (2 being the list price that can be negotiated) per transaction. Then swish has a daily cap of payments you as user can do of 150k SEK (system limit, not a soft cap that the user can remove).
        StudentStuff 9y ago
        That is an extremely low limit for any noteworthy business, equating to $500k USD a month total. Most small grocers here in Seattle do more than that in credit/debit monthly.
- varjag 9y ago
  Norway sidestepped this with nationwide BankAxept piggybacking on Visa, wonder why Sweden didn't.
mistermann 9y ago
People must still use cash to buy drugs, sex, and that sort of thing no?
- dalbasal 9y ago
  These will be provided by a municipal body in cities from now on, parochial for rural areas.
  - GFischer 9y ago
    Well, we do have state grown and sold Marijuana in Uruguay, who knows what a more forward country might do :)
- nugator 9y ago
  Swede here. My guess is that it's mostly cash but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the transactions goes through the very popular big banks-backed mobilenumber-addressed instantaneous app-based no-fee bank account-to-bank account transaction system Swish.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    I don't know about Sweden, but in Copenhagen the only times I've seen a queue at a cash machine is the one nearest Christiania, i.e. where cannabis (and more) is sold. I'd be very surprised if a drug dealer accepted Swish/Mobilepay.
- reaperducer 9y ago
  Not necessarily. Not even in Nevada. If you go to a legal brothel in Nevada, it doesn't show up on your credit card with the brothel's name. It shows up as some bland innocuous looking generic company name like "ARB, Inc."
  - greggarious 9y ago
    That might help hide from a prying spouse, but I assume the data brokers know what "ARB, Inc." means...
INTPenis 9y ago
You're missing the point though. We know Sweden is cashless, I live there too and the article isn't about Sweden becoming cashless. It's about an opposing opinion to the cashless trend that we're already used to. You might not know anyone who shares the opinion but I do, several of them. Personally I share the opinion on an ideological level but practically I'm just too lazy to make a real change in my life. I have friends who always swing by the ATM before we go out, while I pay for everything on my cards. But the real issue here is that if we rely 100% on an electronic method of payment we'll be more crippled than necessary if some calamity would befall our society.
- imartin2k 9y ago
  No I'm not missing the point. I am solely criticizing the absolute lack of accuracy in the headline, as it is misleading beyond the normal level of how headlines are usually misleading. I have not made any comment about opinions about cash, whether I know someone who is has concerns about the lack of cash, or about my own standpoint. In general terms, I feel like you about the topic: "Personally I share the opinion on an ideological level but practically I'm just too lazy to make a real change in my life." That, however, can hardly be called "turning against cashlessness" :)
- moogly 9y ago
  > Personally I share the opinion on an ideological level but practically I'm just too lazy to make a real change in my life. I 100% share this sentiment. The only times I use cash is when I travel to the US.
einhverfr 9y ago
I just moved from Sweden. I used cash frequently, but not in large quantities. Cashlessness is helpful in some cases, but a burden in others. It is true you can get by without cash in Sweden but you cannot get by without a card, reasonably. But many of the corner markets have minimum payments by card, and so often having smallish money in cash is a very good thing. Additionally the farmer markets in the town squares are still mostly cash-based. So I never found cashlessness to work entirely while I was there, whether I was in Malmo, Helsingborg, or Landskrona. Maybe in Stockholm it is different, and maybe it is different if you rarely buy at the farmer markets.... Germany, where I now live is the opposite. You can get by without a card, but you cannot get by without cash....
- imartin2k 9y ago
  Hehe I did the opposite, moved from Cash-obsessed Germany to cashfree Sweden. Whenever I travel back to Germany (or other countries), I take a special, big wallet with me, knowing that I have to put some bills inside.
  - einhverfr 9y ago
    Interesting how much money, despite our view of it as numbers, is deeply tied to culture.
reaperducer 9y ago
Perhaps you missed this part: "But an opinion poll this month revealed unease among Swedes, with almost seven out of 10 saying they wanted to keep the option to use cash, while just 25% wanted a completely cashless society." You might be cashless within your little tech circle, but it appears there are many more people who are uneasy with the idea.
- imartin2k 9y ago
  Hey, if I would have been part of that survey, I also would have said "i want to keep the option to use cash". It's totally possible to embrace the cashless lifestyle while being uneasy with it at the same time. I argue this actually is the norm. Like it is with a lot of stuff we do on the web as well. Who isn't uneasy with all the social media platforms but still uses some of them. It's the new normal. Being uneasy with things and doing them.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jamesblonde 9y ago
Totally agree with this. Most people just dont carry cash. The big trend is shops not accepting cash. My mother-in-law tried to pay for a round at a bar for me today - "sorry, no cash" (O'Leary's Kista). The trend is most definitely towards cashless, not away from it.

mrmekon 9y ago

The second sentence corrects the sensational headline: "the small but growing number of Swedes anxious about their country’s rush to embrace a cash-free society." It must be very small. The only person I've ever heard complain about it is... myself. Not for the reasons this article gives, though. I'm more upset about Visa and Mastercard skimming 1% of profit off of the entire country's retail commerce. Maybe if they weren't simultaneously terrible, but they also have unimaginably bad fraud detection, and push their own fraud problems onto local businesses.

87812487 9y ago
I think it is a interesting question. Before using a payment gateway, what is the cost of using cash? It would be covered by tax. If the whole society is abandoning cash, it is effectively meant raising sales tax by X%, where X is transaction cost of each payment. A cashless country should just use the tax money on cash printing factories to cover the cost of transaction.
imartin2k 9y ago
I see your point, but I have a slight correction: The EU has regulated the interchange fee, which is since then capped at "0.2% of the transaction value for Visa and Mastercard consumer debit cards" and "0.3% of the transaction value for Visa and Mastercard consumer credit cards." (https://www.adyen.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-eu-interchange-cap https://www.adyen.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-eu...) However, I am not a payment expert, so there might be an additional fee imposed by the credit card networks which I am not aware of? This percentage does seem a bit more reasonable for the services offered by Visa and Mastercard, in my eyes.
- mrmekon 9y ago
  Well, true, that's somewhat better. But it's the principle of a privately-owned monopoly or oligopoly skimming profits off of a nation's economy that bothers me, not the absolute amount. As the other response to my comment said, cash itself has an overhead cost, too. But that cost is paid to our government at break-even cost, instead of to a private company for profit. If Visa and Mastercard had plenty of competition, it wouldn't be so bad. Swish is nice to have, despite its problems. Maybe we'll get there.
  - imartin2k 9y ago
    Yeah I tried to find the rates that Swish charges to businesses but didn't find them (although didn't look to thoroughly either). But can it really be even below the 0,2% of cap for debit cards?
    - Symbiote 9y ago
      The rates for Danish MobilePay were easy to find [1], and are flat, under 30-75 ears [2] depending on volume. I'd guess that's around 0.5-1%, but I don't have much idea. [1] https://mobilepay.dk/da-dk/erhverv/Pages/mobilepay-myshop.aspx https://mobilepay.dk/da-dk/erhverv/Pages/mobilepay-myshop.as... [2] Well, I say "crowns" in English
    - Annorax 9y ago
      Swish is 1 to 2 SEK (2 being the list price that can be negotiated) per transaction. Then swish has a daily cap of payments you as user can do of 150k SEK (system limit, not a soft cap that the user can remove).
      - StudentStuff 9y ago
        That is an extremely low limit for any noteworthy business, equating to $500k USD a month total. Most small grocers here in Seattle do more than that in credit/debit monthly.
varjag 9y ago
Norway sidestepped this with nationwide BankAxept piggybacking on Visa, wonder why Sweden didn't.

mistermann 9y ago

People must still use cash to buy drugs, sex, and that sort of thing no?

dalbasal 9y ago
These will be provided by a municipal body in cities from now on, parochial for rural areas.
- GFischer 9y ago
  Well, we do have state grown and sold Marijuana in Uruguay, who knows what a more forward country might do :)
nugator 9y ago
Swede here. My guess is that it's mostly cash but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the transactions goes through the very popular big banks-backed mobilenumber-addressed instantaneous app-based no-fee bank account-to-bank account transaction system Swish.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  I don't know about Sweden, but in Copenhagen the only times I've seen a queue at a cash machine is the one nearest Christiania, i.e. where cannabis (and more) is sold. I'd be very surprised if a drug dealer accepted Swish/Mobilepay.
reaperducer 9y ago
Not necessarily. Not even in Nevada. If you go to a legal brothel in Nevada, it doesn't show up on your credit card with the brothel's name. It shows up as some bland innocuous looking generic company name like "ARB, Inc."
- greggarious 9y ago
  That might help hide from a prying spouse, but I assume the data brokers know what "ARB, Inc." means...

INTPenis 9y ago

You're missing the point though. We know Sweden is cashless, I live there too and the article isn't about Sweden becoming cashless. It's about an opposing opinion to the cashless trend that we're already used to. You might not know anyone who shares the opinion but I do, several of them. Personally I share the opinion on an ideological level but practically I'm just too lazy to make a real change in my life. I have friends who always swing by the ATM before we go out, while I pay for everything on my cards. But the real issue here is that if we rely 100% on an electronic method of payment we'll be more crippled than necessary if some calamity would befall our society.

imartin2k 9y ago
No I'm not missing the point. I am solely criticizing the absolute lack of accuracy in the headline, as it is misleading beyond the normal level of how headlines are usually misleading. I have not made any comment about opinions about cash, whether I know someone who is has concerns about the lack of cash, or about my own standpoint. In general terms, I feel like you about the topic: "Personally I share the opinion on an ideological level but practically I'm just too lazy to make a real change in my life." That, however, can hardly be called "turning against cashlessness" :)
moogly 9y ago
> Personally I share the opinion on an ideological level but practically I'm just too lazy to make a real change in my life. I 100% share this sentiment. The only times I use cash is when I travel to the US.

einhverfr 9y ago

I just moved from Sweden. I used cash frequently, but not in large quantities. Cashlessness is helpful in some cases, but a burden in others. It is true you can get by without cash in Sweden but you cannot get by without a card, reasonably. But many of the corner markets have minimum payments by card, and so often having smallish money in cash is a very good thing. Additionally the farmer markets in the town squares are still mostly cash-based. So I never found cashlessness to work entirely while I was there, whether I was in Malmo, Helsingborg, or Landskrona. Maybe in Stockholm it is different, and maybe it is different if you rarely buy at the farmer markets.... Germany, where I now live is the opposite. You can get by without a card, but you cannot get by without cash....

imartin2k 9y ago
Hehe I did the opposite, moved from Cash-obsessed Germany to cashfree Sweden. Whenever I travel back to Germany (or other countries), I take a special, big wallet with me, knowing that I have to put some bills inside.
- einhverfr 9y ago
  Interesting how much money, despite our view of it as numbers, is deeply tied to culture.

reaperducer 9y ago

Perhaps you missed this part: "But an opinion poll this month revealed unease among Swedes, with almost seven out of 10 saying they wanted to keep the option to use cash, while just 25% wanted a completely cashless society." You might be cashless within your little tech circle, but it appears there are many more people who are uneasy with the idea.

imartin2k 9y ago
Hey, if I would have been part of that survey, I also would have said "i want to keep the option to use cash". It's totally possible to embrace the cashless lifestyle while being uneasy with it at the same time. I argue this actually is the norm. Like it is with a lot of stuff we do on the web as well. Who isn't uneasy with all the social media platforms but still uses some of them. It's the new normal. Being uneasy with things and doing them.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jamesblonde 9y ago

Totally agree with this. Most people just dont carry cash. The big trend is shops not accepting cash. My mother-in-law tried to pay for a round at a bar for me today - "sorry, no cash" (O'Leary's Kista). The trend is most definitely towards cashless, not away from it.