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I'm in Sweden, a strong contender for the most cashless country, and I don't know what the banknotes look like. They were changed some 5 or 6 years ago and I ha

I'm in Sweden, a strong contender for the most cashless country, and I don't know what the banknotes look like. They were changed some 5 or 6 years ago and I haven't paid with or even withdrawn cash since then. For illustration, cash is generally not accepted outside of grocery stores and some chains. For a typical restaurant, coffee shop or takeaway there's very little chance they take cash. Street vendors may take cash but will definitely have a proper cashless payment method. I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country. I'm also very concerned about privacy, I'm that sort of HN person - never had a Facebook account, run self-hosted email for 20 years, use Signal for messaging as much as I can, etc. But I don't think cash is a good solution to privacy. I'd rather see laws and (better) cryptocurrencies as the privacy toolkit. One common concern I see from US-centric articles is about your transaction history being sold for ad targeting, etc. That at least is illegal here. A store is not allowed to track your history of purchases or similar unless you opt in, such as via a store loyalty card. Banks are not allowed to disclose anything about your accounts except in some investigatory contexts, but definitely not for commercial purposes. So neither "the store will track my purchases because I pay by card" nor "the bank will sell my history to advertisers", which would be major issues for me, are actual concerns.

coldtea 3y ago
>I'm also very concerned about privacy, I'm that sort of HN person - never had a Facebook account, run self-hosted email for 20 years, use Signal for messaging as much as I can, etc. But I don't think cash is a good solution to privacy. I'd rather see laws and (better) cryptocurrencies as the privacy toolkit. We wont see those. Instead we'll see more enchroachment of privacy - because cash was actually the solution: existing for millenia, trusted, no transaction fees, no monitoring of purchases, non remotely invalidated, not requiring fancy technology to use, works from buying a car to getting some help as a beggar on the streets. >That at least is illegal here. Would that ever stopped companies pulling that shit?
- Yujf 3y ago
  The fees of cash are considerable for many businesses. At least where I live returning money to the bank is not free.
_xivi 3y ago
> I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country. What would you do in case of a emergency or natural distaster? Basically a situation where any of the following is not available for any period of time: power, network, financial infrastructure, access to digital devices. 1. On personal level: Maybe your wallet and phone was stolen 2. Region: Power/Network is down 3. National level: the whole infrastructure is down or under attack Have you been in such situation or thought about it?
- madsbuch 3y ago
  This is usually the go-to arguments for cash, though I think it is not the right ones. The right argument is privacy. These things can be handled easily: In case of an emergency you can just revert to writing credit notes to each other, which is is spirit the same as cash (contracts denoting that someone owes you something). > On personal level: Maybe your wallet and phone was stolen This is the same as forgetting to withdraw money and an unfortunate accident. It is also handled quite well already, as modern people have credit cards in their wallet, in their phone and on their watch. So there is already a 3-way backup that needs to break.
  - _xivi 3y ago
    > It is also handled quite well already, as modern people have credit cards in their wallet, in their phone and on their watch. So there is already a 3-way backup that needs to break. Personally, I'd not use the word 'backup' if you can lose all three in a single accident. Also, these are just different forms of access, none of these would work if the infrastructure is down. It seems you dodged my points. I'm not advocating for cash, more like warning that an online-only system isn't resilient enough in the first place. In the scenarios I provided, if cash doesn't exist (as per OP wishes), the only solution I see would be going back to trading goods/services. What valuable possession/skills does a person have.
- ACS_Solver 3y ago
  Such robustness is currently a subject of government studies and planning. It's definitely an area of concern. A personal-level outage is a problem but less so than with cash. I have three separate items on me I can use to pay - my card holder with bank cards, my phone and my watch. That's more redundancy than with cash, which is one item (wallet). Power or network outages aren't a big issue. I've experienced those and it's smooth. Most payment machines work fine without power (batteries) or without network because they then store the transactions locally and send them later. I've even had lunch when the lunch restaurant was having IT problems and couldn't accept any payments - they noted how many people came on paper and I came back the next day to pay, as I'm sure the vast majority of patrons did. Bank or card issuer outages are handled by using another card or payment method. If some bank's cards aren't working (uncommon but it happens), mobile payments generally work still, and most people have more than one card. Major national level outages are a concern. It would be impossible to buy e.g. a train ticket as those require immediate payment, so if somehow Internet was down nationwide, you couldn't get a train ticket online or at the ticket machines. This is one major goal that the e-krona (state-issued digital currency) project is meant to address as e-krona is intended to also work offline.
belorn 3y ago
I share to a large degree this viewpoint that I'd rather see laws and better technology as a solution to the ever connected and tracked future that we live in. I try to use cash in Sweden since we don't have those laws yet, but replacing paper, metal and cashiers would be good if the drawbacks could be resolved. The laws we already have do not work. A large part of Swedish intelligence policy is to trade information with partners like the US, and I would consider it extremely unlikely that highly valuable data like bank transactions was not part of that. The US intelligence policy in turn is known to use such information occasionally for commercial purposes, when it has a national impact. The Swedish courts are also not trained to deal with low-value evidence data. There is an assumption that if data exists, it must do so because there was a reason someone deemed it worth gathering. This assumption breaks apart when data is always collected as a default, which means courts would need to be retrained when this kind of data is presented as evidence (we are slowly getting there but still very far from where I would feel safe). It also makes investigatory contexts dangerous, especially if records are part of fishing operations where single bit errors in storing, retrieving, copying and relaying records can have extreme effects. This include swish which records are very common in court hearings. In some cases it seems that only a single swish record is enough for someone to get charged with a crime, with the accused having to provide evidence to prove that they are innocent.
standardUser 3y ago
> I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country. That's fine for you but some of us need to buy illegal drugs.
sneak 3y ago
This is the same Sweden that issued a bogus arrest warrant for Assange? If you think they won’t point and click seize your assets and freeze your accounts prior to trial for publishing the wrong thing, you’re crazy. Cash is the backup, and must be preserved. Electronic payments can be centrally censored.

coldtea 3y ago

>I'm also very concerned about privacy, I'm that sort of HN person - never had a Facebook account, run self-hosted email for 20 years, use Signal for messaging as much as I can, etc. But I don't think cash is a good solution to privacy. I'd rather see laws and (better) cryptocurrencies as the privacy toolkit. We wont see those. Instead we'll see more enchroachment of privacy - because cash was actually the solution: existing for millenia, trusted, no transaction fees, no monitoring of purchases, non remotely invalidated, not requiring fancy technology to use, works from buying a car to getting some help as a beggar on the streets. >That at least is illegal here. Would that ever stopped companies pulling that shit?

Yujf 3y ago
The fees of cash are considerable for many businesses. At least where I live returning money to the bank is not free.

_xivi 3y ago

> I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country. What would you do in case of a emergency or natural distaster? Basically a situation where any of the following is not available for any period of time: power, network, financial infrastructure, access to digital devices. 1. On personal level: Maybe your wallet and phone was stolen 2. Region: Power/Network is down 3. National level: the whole infrastructure is down or under attack Have you been in such situation or thought about it?

madsbuch 3y ago
This is usually the go-to arguments for cash, though I think it is not the right ones. The right argument is privacy. These things can be handled easily: In case of an emergency you can just revert to writing credit notes to each other, which is is spirit the same as cash (contracts denoting that someone owes you something). > On personal level: Maybe your wallet and phone was stolen This is the same as forgetting to withdraw money and an unfortunate accident. It is also handled quite well already, as modern people have credit cards in their wallet, in their phone and on their watch. So there is already a 3-way backup that needs to break.
- _xivi 3y ago
  > It is also handled quite well already, as modern people have credit cards in their wallet, in their phone and on their watch. So there is already a 3-way backup that needs to break. Personally, I'd not use the word 'backup' if you can lose all three in a single accident. Also, these are just different forms of access, none of these would work if the infrastructure is down. It seems you dodged my points. I'm not advocating for cash, more like warning that an online-only system isn't resilient enough in the first place. In the scenarios I provided, if cash doesn't exist (as per OP wishes), the only solution I see would be going back to trading goods/services. What valuable possession/skills does a person have.
ACS_Solver 3y ago
Such robustness is currently a subject of government studies and planning. It's definitely an area of concern. A personal-level outage is a problem but less so than with cash. I have three separate items on me I can use to pay - my card holder with bank cards, my phone and my watch. That's more redundancy than with cash, which is one item (wallet). Power or network outages aren't a big issue. I've experienced those and it's smooth. Most payment machines work fine without power (batteries) or without network because they then store the transactions locally and send them later. I've even had lunch when the lunch restaurant was having IT problems and couldn't accept any payments - they noted how many people came on paper and I came back the next day to pay, as I'm sure the vast majority of patrons did. Bank or card issuer outages are handled by using another card or payment method. If some bank's cards aren't working (uncommon but it happens), mobile payments generally work still, and most people have more than one card. Major national level outages are a concern. It would be impossible to buy e.g. a train ticket as those require immediate payment, so if somehow Internet was down nationwide, you couldn't get a train ticket online or at the ticket machines. This is one major goal that the e-krona (state-issued digital currency) project is meant to address as e-krona is intended to also work offline.

belorn 3y ago

I share to a large degree this viewpoint that I'd rather see laws and better technology as a solution to the ever connected and tracked future that we live in. I try to use cash in Sweden since we don't have those laws yet, but replacing paper, metal and cashiers would be good if the drawbacks could be resolved. The laws we already have do not work. A large part of Swedish intelligence policy is to trade information with partners like the US, and I would consider it extremely unlikely that highly valuable data like bank transactions was not part of that. The US intelligence policy in turn is known to use such information occasionally for commercial purposes, when it has a national impact. The Swedish courts are also not trained to deal with low-value evidence data. There is an assumption that if data exists, it must do so because there was a reason someone deemed it worth gathering. This assumption breaks apart when data is always collected as a default, which means courts would need to be retrained when this kind of data is presented as evidence (we are slowly getting there but still very far from where I would feel safe). It also makes investigatory contexts dangerous, especially if records are part of fishing operations where single bit errors in storing, retrieving, copying and relaying records can have extreme effects. This include swish which records are very common in court hearings. In some cases it seems that only a single swish record is enough for someone to get charged with a crime, with the accused having to provide evidence to prove that they are innocent.

standardUser 3y ago

> I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country. That's fine for you but some of us need to buy illegal drugs.

sneak 3y ago

This is the same Sweden that issued a bogus arrest warrant for Assange? If you think they won’t point and click seize your assets and freeze your accounts prior to trial for publishing the wrong thing, you’re crazy. Cash is the backup, and must be preserved. Electronic payments can be centrally censored.