4 ms·

One of our biggest practical vulnerabilities is that our payment and electronic id infrastructure (nets, dankort, mitid) has been sold off to a private company

• jamesblonde 1y ago
  In Sweden, we have Swish, thank God. We don't have Greenland either, so people aren't as worried about 'exogenous shocks'.
  • vodou 1y ago
    Swish is great, but it is sensitive infrastructure. It has already been down multiple times due to DDoS attacks (together with BankId). Don't let Swish completely replace a stash of cash at home.
    • jamesblonde 1y ago
      It's another knife in the drawer.
    • benrutter 1y ago
      I've got bad news for you on that front: https://www.explorsweden.com/sweden-destinations/sweden-a-cashless-society-embracing-the-future-of-money/ https://www.explorsweden.com/sweden-destinations/sweden-a-ca... (tldr Sweden is pretty cashless and a lot of shops don't accept cash)
      • dijit 1y ago
        speaking from a Swedish perspective, I haven’t even seen Swedish currency in about eight years. I’m not even joking.
        • guappa 1y ago
          That's your personal choice. Doesn't mean stores don't accept cash.
          • dijit 1y ago
            No, its the nature of the country. And, most companies don’t take cash, especially smaller ones. Large companies (ICA the supermarket) takes cash but it’s like 1/200 who use cash and the cashier is often visibly flustered when cash is presented.
            • guappa 1y ago
              Please stop mansplaining (and wrongly so at that!). I happen to be in sweden in this very moment. And no, cashiers are not flustered and alarmed when they see cash, old people pay with cash every day. Yes there is some restaurants that will not take cash. Last april I was in a place where they did not take cards :) There's more to sweden than what you personally experience.
              • nandomrumber 1y ago
                What does gender have to do with this conversation?
                • guappa 1y ago
                  Unfortunately there is no term for "stop explaining my own country to me", but there are similarities with that other situation so… a rhetorical figure? Heard of those?
                  • dijit 1y ago
                    There was a term: condescending, which is ironic because you were being quite condescending in your reply to me about my observed experience being somehow a personal choice. I could write a huge diatribe of statistics and behaviours that back me up, it's quite public that even in 2022 across the entire country only 8% of transactions were made in cash- which is even lower in the cities. https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/rapporter/betalningsrapport/2022/engelsk/payments-report-2022.pdf https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/rapporter/betalni... And it's also quite well known that many independent businesses do not accept cash (my Coffee Shop, the restaurants I frequent (Quan in Malmo, Marvin in Malmo)). And yes I've visibly seen cashiers recoil after putting a transaction through to the payment terminal; only to have the person tell them that they'd rather pay in cash (leading to the cashier becoming flustered). Yes, it's more common that old people use cash (from my observed experience) but increasingly they're using debit cards (not mobile payment methods like younger folks), but no: the country is pretty much cashless; and coming from the UK (where not accepting cash is definitely a more controversial decision outside of London): here it's seen as pretty normal to say "no cash" or "cash free". Speaking for: Stockholm, Malmo, Gothenburg, Lund, Sundsvall, Oskarshamn and Umeå, and after being in the country for 11 years. I'm not sure what other representation I should be seeing. Talking about my personal observed experience doesn't invalidate yours, but it feels like I can speak for the overwhelming majority of the population here. And incidentally I'm also in Sweden right now (https://mrkoll.se/person/Jan-Martin-Harris-Harasym-Kattsundsgatan-20-Malmo/uerADYuquerAmUxadYQabTAQmkyqRaQcYfrkyqRaQdYQakyqRaQcYfr https://mrkoll.se/person/Jan-Martin-Harris-Harasym-Kattsunds...); if you'd like me to document a day trying to use only cash I'll let you know how it goes. But I won't be able to get to work (Malmo Busses do not take cash) and I won't be able to eat at any of the restaurants in Malmo (Saluhallen and the others I mentioned above are entirely cashless) so I'll have to use COOP, Willis or ICA exclusively.
  • cess11 1y ago
    We've invited foreign occupation through the DCA with the US and there was very little resistance so clearly few swedes care about sovereignty and territorial integrity, which changes in which I assume is what you mean by "exogenous schocks".
    • dijit 1y ago
      [dead]
  • chvid 1y ago
    Denmark is in a crazy situation where what we saw as a key trusted partner (the US) all of sudden is extremely hostile towards us due its re-ignited territorial ambitions in Greenland. In public discourse this is being met with riducule and disbelief but I believe behind the scenes in government it is being taken quite serious. And obviously having our payment infrastrcture in the hands of an adversarial nation is unacceptable.
    • jamesblonde 1y ago
      The worst thing is the lack of solidarity towards the danes here in Sweden. If Trump turns off Microsoft, Sweden will shrug its shoulders and privately say - thank god it's not us. yet.
      • chvid 1y ago
        It is crazy; but it is wake up time for us Europeans. We are already seeing US campaigns against judges and legal scholars in the Netherlands, Italy, and Brazil.
        • 0dayz 1y ago
          Mind sharing those articles?
          • chvid 1y ago
            The Brazil stuff is related to the case againt Trump-ally Bolsonaro. The European cases so far have been related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The US uses its so-called SDN list which in general prevents the person having a bank account in any western country. It also caused Microsoft to kill off the email account (I believe the full azure services - ie. Active Directory - rendering his work computer useless) of a prosecutor at the international criminal court: https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-services-international-criminal-court-president-american-sanctions-trump-tech-icc-amazon-google/ https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic... Microsoft didn’t cut services to International Criminal Court, its president says Chief prosecutor’s email issues have spurred fears in Europe that Trump could trigger a “kill switch” through U.S. tech giants abroad. ... A Microsoft spokesperson said that it had been in contact with the court since February “throughout the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services.” The spokesperson added that “at no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC.”
  • guappa 1y ago
    And? Remember when all coops closed for a few days due to a ransomware to some USA company?
  • victorbjorklund 1y ago
    On the other hand, Swish is fully owned by a couple of banks together. So they have full control over Swish and also over BankID, which means that they can deny people from access or if they are down then you know we're screwed. So even if it's not relying on one single company it's relying on a few companies that work together. So instead of a monopoly it's a cartel.
    • vintermann 1y ago
      And as a practical matter, they make sure everyone has a smartphone firmly managed by either Apple or Google, with the excuse of protecting us from ourselves.
    • jamesblonde 1y ago
      Those banks are under Swedish jurisdiction. Big difference.
• ksimukka 1y ago
  What are your thoughts on Vipps MobilePay?
  • chvid 1y ago
    As far as I know it sits on top of the payment services provided by Nets. But we have had some situations where part of Nets' services breaks down but MobilePay have been able to operate.
    • arghwhat 1y ago
      MobilePay starts by being direct bank transactions, and can still use this to some extend. Now it also has credit cards associated though, which depends on Nets to clear.
    • SomeUserName432 1y ago
      Didn't they move over to Adyen a few years ago?
• mordae 1y ago
  That's likely a non-issue when actual crisis happens. A voucher app + paper vouchers are doable in under a month if needed.
  • guappa 1y ago
    You will get riots and looting long before "under a month".
• tommica 1y ago
  Yeah, it's such a massive infrastructure weakness. Once digital currency is the only option, things will get wild.
• N19PEDL2 1y ago
  You should join EPI or EuroPA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Alliance
• arunabha 1y ago
  A lot of countries have learnt from this and maintain a govt mandated /supported standard for digital payments. In India, the universal payments interface (UPI) has been hugely successful in providing instant, commission less payments for a vast majority of the population. Similarly, RuPay is the common standard for credit and debit cards. It's eye opening to see just how effective and impactful these two have been, particularly UPI. The smallest seller in the remotest village will likely accept UPI payments. What's mind blowing is that all of this came about in the short span of just under a decade.
• colorman 1y ago
  Do you have a source for the Mastercard ownership? I haven't been able to find information about them being in control of MitID.
• arghwhat 1y ago
  Nets sold its account-to-account payment business to Mastercard. Nets, which is itself a private company operating in many countries, has not been sold to Mastercard, nor has Dankort, MitID, or others been sold to Mastercard. The services sold are, for example, Betalingsservice in Denmark and AvtaleGiro/eFaktura in Norway. To be honest, my concern is that Nets is that Nets is entirely unable to competently provide any services competently and reliably, so while they shouldn't be moved to a US company, I sure do hope that we get everything they do replaced by something else. Only Nets could somehow manage to make it much more expensive in fees to have a scheduled direct bank transaction (Betalingsservice - for reference, bank transfers are free and instant here) than using a VISA card with fees going to the US. They have also completely ruined Dankort adoption and reliability, and made MitID into a great big mess of a reliability and usability nightmare.
• Thorrez 1y ago
  In an emergency, electronic payment won't work at all, right? People will have to use cash I think.