6 ms·

Denmark is inching closer to becoming cashless

37 points by ghosh 11y ago

PeekPoke 11y ago
This is the taxmans dream - all transactions recorded and traceable.
- cperciva 11y ago
  Being able to see every time a dollar (or krone, I suppose) changed hands isn't enough for the taxman though. Last month Tarsnap Backup Inc. wrote me a cheque, and there's a very clear electronic trail showing the money moving from Tarsnap's account to mine. But that electronic trail says nothing about the reason why the money moved. If Tarsnap was paying me a bonus, that would be taxable income. But if Tarsnap was merely reimbursing me for expenses I paid on my personal credit card, that's not taxable. The taxman can only tell the difference when they turn up at my door and ask to see my records showing why that money was paid. (The answer, incidentally, is that Tarsnap was reimbursing me for the AWS bill I paid via my credit card. Tarsnap, being a Canadian small business, can't get a US dollar credit card with a limit high enough to pay its AWS bills, but my personal credit card has a generous limit.)
  - beagle3 11y ago
    The taxman would ask you to file that explanation; 4 years down the line, 5 times, to different auditors, at different times, using different forms. You are presumed guilty until you've proved your innocence. And if you've lost the paper trail - well, then, it's a taxable bonus. (Canada might not yet be this bad - no experience there. But I've filed taxes in 3 countries that are)
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Around here, you're always required to file those records every month (electronically). Don't assume this gets you off the hook from having to produce them later to an audit, though - it's still your responsibility to hold on to them.
  - CarlHoerberg 11y ago
    (Most often you can pay AWS by wire transfer if you contact them)
    - cperciva 11y ago
      Yes, I've talked to them and nearly ended up going the wire transfer route. But using a credit card and reimbursing myself ended up being easier and cheaper.
  - blumkvist 11y ago
    Checks are not electronic. If you shop at a store, the transaction record says what items you've bought. Nobody can stop the tax authorities demanding you to attach an invoice to every transaction a business makes. It would be trivially easy for businesses to implement it nowadays with the software they have. Many businesses do it this way already, if they use their invoicing vendor (xero,quickbooks) to accept the payment as well.
- beagle3 11y ago
  And also a dream of every dictatorship and totalitarian. Other than recordable or traceable, you quickly get to a point where one keypress is all that is needed to freeze someone's money. All of it. The question of abuse is not of "if", but rather of "when".
  - alkonaut 11y ago
    I can't see how it's such a big difference from today? There is no way I could get my salary in cash/cheque, the only way I have of accessing my own money is via the bank it is transferred to. 99% of the time, I access it via a debit card at a. Granted, when I get cash I can buy something that can't be traced, but the cash man doesn't really care much what I buy, the VAT is taken from the store. If I was suspected of terrorism or some other crime that meant my assets should be frozen, that is a single push of a button already. I don't have a safe with cash, most people don't. Even if I had, it would be exceedingly hard to live cash-only, as any major purchase done in cash would be affected by money-laundry rules, so the tax man would certainly be informed if I bought e.g. a car cash (If I did so from a dealer I wouldn't be able to do it anonymously).
    - gambiting 11y ago
      Just because you do it that way,doesn't mean everyone does. My parents employ 130 people and they are all paid in cash.
      - alkonaut 11y ago
        That sounds like it's US or at least not north/west Europe. My point is: in Denmark/Sweden/etc, the step to cash-free isn't very big, simply because of what I mentioned: we are more or less cash free already: Salaries are paid to bank accounts and never cash/cheque (cheques don't exist), bills are paid from bank accounts and not cash Cash is tracked by anti money laundry laws and so on and so forth. So unlike in the US those prerequisites are already in place. That is why a) it's not really a giant leap to stop using cash, and b) it's not really a major privacy concern as we are already pretty much completely tracked.
- Xixi 11y ago
  It is a taxman dream, of course. But I would not be surprised if it was seen as largely positive by most citizens, especially the honest ones (and most citizens are honest by virtue of being salaried, with little to no room for fraud). It depends on the country of course, but tax fraud (or even tax evasion) is rarely seen as a good thing.
- stevenjohns 11y ago
  Contrasted with the extremist dream of the cash only society, where there is so much corruption and bureaucracy (as a defense method against corruption) that society can't properly function (see Iraq). I personally think a mix of both is good. I'm a supporter of receiving electronic payments from work, with the ability to spend it as paper if I'd want to.
- hobarrera 11y ago
  And this is exactly why electronic payment has such bad adoption in many places, where tax evasion is the norm (mostly underdeveloped countries, of course).
nateguchi 11y ago
I'm still waiting for receipts to go
raverbashing 11y ago
While I'm a big proponent of cards, and a firm "mythbuster" of the "getting cash is free" myth, going 100% cashless worries me a great deal. What if I'm visiting and my card is not accepted, for example? Also, this facilitates central bank policies. Like negative interest rates and lending massively to banks
- alkonaut 11y ago
  What is the connection betweek cash-vs.-plastic and central bank policies? Is it the amount of money held in cash? That has to be pretty small already in a place like denmark?
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    "The difference to other jurisdictions is however that negative interest rates have become so pronounced, that it is by now worth it to simply withdraw one’s cash and put it into an insured vault." http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-25/war-cash-migrates-switzerland http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-25/war-cash-migrates-s...
  - michaelt 11y ago
    A few days ago there was an article [1] posted here [2] about negative interest rates:- As long as paper money is available as an alternative for customers who want to withdraw their deposits, there’s a limit to how low central banks can push rates. At some point it becomes cost-effective to rent a warehouse for your billions in cash and hire armed guards to protect it. [...] Bank notes, as an alternate storehouse of value, are a constraint on central banks’ power. “We view this constraint as undesirable,” Citigroup Global Chief Economist Willem Buiter and a colleague, economist Ebrahim Rahbari, wrote in an April 8 research piece. They laid out three ways that central banks could foil cash hoarders: One, abolish paper money. Two, tax paper money. Three, sever the link between paper money and central bank reserves. Of course, inflation already serves as a tax on savings, so this isn't as radical as it sounds if governments really want to discourage saving. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/negative-interest-rates-may-spark-existential-crisis-for-cash http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/negative-i... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9496568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9496568
bodhi 11y ago
> Still, essential services like [...] chiropractors Is it just me that finds this odd? Or are Chiropractors much more common in Denmark?
- emirozer 11y ago
  That really is odd, considering there was never a solid proof for chiropractic procedures helping people in the long term. I may have mistaken but as far as i know its just a momentarily relief.
  - Toast_ 11y ago
    Treating symptoms rather than the 'cause' is in fact common practice; Consider the case for Ambien.
- maaaats 11y ago
  Many chiropractors in Scandinavia are basically physiotherapists specialized in back/neck problems, so the normal criticism about chiropractors doesn't necessarily apply to them. But yeah, some of them are the same quackery as you are thinking about. Not sure why the "real" ones use the loaded name.
skrebbel 11y ago
For me, cash payments mean privacy (at least until all shops have facebook-uplinked facial recognition cameras installed in every corner). But then again, Danes never seemed to care much about privacy (you can look up a person's address and all kinds of personal data if you know their social security number, for example), so I doubt there's going to be much backlash.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  There is nothing that says that cash-free also implies that all payments are transferred via credit card companies and banks that record everything. A cheaper system for small payments via some form of "electronic cash" needs to be added to the mix. If we are in luck, that system is invented by someone other than a credit card system, bank, or Apple.
  - Tomte 11y ago
    It has existed for a long time now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geldkarte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geldkarte No one uses it.
  - collyw 11y ago
    It probably does exist. But when Apple do it the media will be in awe of how Apple is revolutionizing payments.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  > you can look up a person's address and all kinds of personal data if you know their social security number, for example Other people aren't supposed to know your SSN. A former police officer who was fed up with the poor security surrounding some online government service managed to extract and publish the prime ministers SSN and got in a lot of trouble.
  - hultner 11y ago
    I think this differs widely from country to country. Here in Sweden our SSN equivalent (personnummer) is public information accessible to anyone by calling calling the register office and today even via various third party online services.
walterbell 11y ago
Week-old discussion (142 comments) on cash and negative interest rates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9496568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9496568
ghostberry 11y ago
How do you give money to a poor homeless person?
- necrodawg 11y ago
  It said Denmark, not the USA. People here have homes.
  - ghostberry 11y ago
    30 seconds of searching later http://udenfor.dk/uk/Menu/News/The+number+of+homeless+people+in+Denmark http://udenfor.dk/uk/Menu/News/The+number+of+homeless+people...
    - Squarel 11y ago
      He did not say no one is homeless. The number of people you see sitting on the street begging in a Danish city vs the number in a US location is vastly different. Homeless people in DK often sell a magazine, and you can pay for this using a mobile.
onion2k 11y ago
The rise of electronic payment could also raise privacy concerns, but Hahn said these pale in comparison to what it would mean for state revenues. Those two things appear related but they really aren't. The claim that you need a detailed record of all transactions in order to maximise tax revenue and stop crime is wrong; you only need a record of the financial aspect - the value of the transaction, when it happened, what was purchased, and what tax was due. You don't need any information about who bought the items to ensure the tax is collected properly. You could have a cashless society that respects privacy by making a legal requirement for the details of who made a transaction to be stored separately and anonymously to the tax reporting information. If Denmark's system doesn't do that then they have made a choice to deliberately limit people's privacy. Suggesting privacy has to be compromised in order to report tax receipts properly is nonsense.
flurdy 11y ago
Im all for it. I moved back to Norway for a few years (2006) and most of the time there I only carried my debit card and no cash. I sometimes had a 200kr note in the same card sleeve for emergencies, but think I only used it once or twice in the 5-6 years I was there. Even remote pop up cafes/hot dog stands in the middle of nowhere took chip and pin cards. It annoyed when I moved back to the UK that I had to start carry cash again as most corner shops in the UK have a minimum spend of £5 for cards. For valid reasons as in the UK the card providers charge a much higher fee than in Norway but it generally makes me avoid those shops. The spread of contactless cards are also a blessing (in the UK and Norway). Paying for kids ride on stationary cars in shopping centres, even quick charity donations, etc are all great friction removing innovations. (http://www.fundraising.co.uk/2015/01/22/cruk-trials-contactless-giving-through-the-charity-shop-window/ http://www.fundraising.co.uk/2015/01/22/cruk-trials-contactl...)
- learnstats2 11y ago
  > the card providers charge a much higher fee I suggest that card providers would charge an even higher fee if nobody was using cash.
xycodex 11y ago
Bad idea. Cash is the ultimate failure mode for on-site payment systems. What if the internet/phones went out? What if I'm visiting from abroad and my card is declined for potential fraud?
- hobarrera 11y ago
  Lots of places already fail to generate invoices with no internet/electricity, so there really no new issue here. Besides, I expect countries like Denmark don't have power/internet outages as often us we do in underdeveloped countries. Also, you can notify your bank if you're travelling abroad so they don't reject anything. It's actually mandatory for some banks.
lyschoening 11y ago
I still carry a single note around with me here as a backup, but I rarely have to use it. What has really advanced the process in recent years is MobilePay, a mobile app that let's anyone send money to anyone else with a phone number, provided they also have the app. As for privacy concerns - my guess is criminals and those with privacy concerns will resort to pooling payments in some way - e.g. by converting it to some virtual currency and then back again. The tracking of regular people's transactions is of course getting much much easier.
- tsotha 11y ago
  That's a good point. The criminals will always find a way around it. They'll do business in stacks of euros or dollars. You can get rid of the official currency, but there will always be people using some kind of currency. Currency from some other country, drugs, precious metals. Even favors. The only people who will be completely locked in are the 9-5 types.
plesner 11y ago
I'm Danish and I find this thoroughly distressing. The payment processor, Nets, is a monopoly, owned by US investment firms. They have frequent outages and are unapologetic when they do. There is no transparency. They have a terrible privacy record (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Se_og_H%C3%B8r_media_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Se_og_H%C3%B8r_media_scan...). Until last year everyone down to their phone support staff had open access to everyone's payment records (see http://www.computerworld.dk/art/230818/alle-kundeservice-folk-i-nets-har-adgang-til-foelsomme-kort-data http://www.computerworld.dk/art/230818/alle-kundeservice-fol... -- in Danish). Despite all these issues they just laid off a bunch of people. Their only priority, it appears, it making money for the owners. Money is a critical piece of infrastructure and these guys absolutely cannot be trusted to implement it. With more payment processors and a regulatory framework that forced them to provide decent service maybe cashless is not a bad idea. With the current implementation though there's a good chance it will be a disaster. It will certainly be a gaping vulnerability for anyone who should feel like targeting us; I wouldn't be surprised if all it would take to bring the whole thing down is one lone hacker.
- sumedh 11y ago
  India developed its own payment network called Rupay although adoption is a bit slow among the masses. Denmark should create its own network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPay
  - plesner 11y ago
    It is homegrown. The Dankort was a government initiative originally built and paid for by a consortium of banks back in the 80s. The theory was that the savings for the banks from having a more efficient alternative to cash would pay for the development costs, which is exactly how it turned out. But then the banks forgot that what they spent on payment processing they made back elsewhere and wanted it to pay for itself, and started cutting costs. Finally last year they sold the whole thing off to the US. In addition, the dankort is strictly regulated to the benefit of consumers which the banks dislike because it limits how much they can charge when you use it. They have an interest in pushing people to visa or mastercard or their own mobile payment solutions which don't have the same restrictions. The payment processor itself is developing their own alternative to compete with the dankort which they are mandated to also implement. I don't think they provide bad dankort service on purpose but it's a concern that good service is actually against their own economic interest.
Htsthbjig 11y ago
Going to the store and having a problem with one of the products, we looked at the registry of all my last purchases(that got recorded for using a discount card) so they could see I was right. Just looking at the list it felt so wrong. Everything I bought, with the day on it, the person that attended me FOR YEARS. I mean, they had all this information about me that even I do not have about myself so they could study me like a Guinea Pig. Governments are collecting more information about us that the Stasi or KGB. Transcribing our phone conversations, our GPS position, and now everything we buy, where we buy it, when we buy it and soon with whom we do it. This is a serious problem. We are predators by nature, the first thing hunters do is study the habits of their victims so they can find vulnerabilities. Too much power in a few hands. This people also have the power to make money, and want to ban cash so they can force you interest in your own savings(negative interest or tax your money).
- raverbashing 11y ago
  that got recorded for using a discount card And now you know what's the purpose of a discount card
anon4 11y ago
What if I want to give 20 quid to a friend? The thing that worries me the most about cashless is how it makes it extremely hard to give money to others -- each transfer needs to be a bank transfer and if I want to give you money, you need to be carrying a device approved by the bank, into which I can insert my card, write my PIN, etc., etc. Unless you can show me how person-to-person money transfer will work, I'm not convinced cashless will work. Also, I don't agree with having to pay to pay, i.e. the "x%" tax on each purchase the bank takes.
- useerup 11y ago
  Two very popular apps in Denmark are "Mobilepay" and "Swipp". You download an app and connect it to your bank account (typically by means of a plastic card). It is extremely easy to make person-person or person-business payments with the apps. You only need to know the phone number of the recipient. The transfer is immediate and the recipient gets a receipt on through his/her app in seconds. It has become a very popular way to settle smaller amounts between friends, restaurant bills etc. It is actually easier than cash since you do not need small change.
MrZongle2 11y ago
"Dad, can I have my allowance?" "Sure, let me just find my phone....ok, firing up my MobilPay app...selecting your name from my contacts....entering amount of $10....entering my PIN for confirmation.....whoops. Getting an error. Let me try again. Uh oh, looks like the service is down at the moment. Sorry, son...you'll have to wait. Maybe it will be back up in an hour or so." (If you don't have kids, substitute with a yard sale/flea market, handout to a panhandler, impromptu purchase at a food truck, repayment of a small loan to a friend, etc...) Mountain of privacy horrors aside, a cashless society still looks like hell if you need to engage in a transaction with anybody or anything that doesn't have a card reader. And the solution is neither "don't have those transactions" nor "add more card readers".
cjsthompson 11y ago
The real reason they are going through with this is so the mafias that are called states can police everything you do with your money. It's just as unnacceptable as electronic voting machines and should be opposed at all costs.

37 points by ghosh 11y ago

PeekPoke 11y ago

This is the taxmans dream - all transactions recorded and traceable.

cperciva 11y ago
Being able to see every time a dollar (or krone, I suppose) changed hands isn't enough for the taxman though. Last month Tarsnap Backup Inc. wrote me a cheque, and there's a very clear electronic trail showing the money moving from Tarsnap's account to mine. But that electronic trail says nothing about the reason why the money moved. If Tarsnap was paying me a bonus, that would be taxable income. But if Tarsnap was merely reimbursing me for expenses I paid on my personal credit card, that's not taxable. The taxman can only tell the difference when they turn up at my door and ask to see my records showing why that money was paid. (The answer, incidentally, is that Tarsnap was reimbursing me for the AWS bill I paid via my credit card. Tarsnap, being a Canadian small business, can't get a US dollar credit card with a limit high enough to pay its AWS bills, but my personal credit card has a generous limit.)
- beagle3 11y ago
  The taxman would ask you to file that explanation; 4 years down the line, 5 times, to different auditors, at different times, using different forms. You are presumed guilty until you've proved your innocence. And if you've lost the paper trail - well, then, it's a taxable bonus. (Canada might not yet be this bad - no experience there. But I've filed taxes in 3 countries that are)
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Around here, you're always required to file those records every month (electronically). Don't assume this gets you off the hook from having to produce them later to an audit, though - it's still your responsibility to hold on to them.
- CarlHoerberg 11y ago
  (Most often you can pay AWS by wire transfer if you contact them)
  - cperciva 11y ago
    Yes, I've talked to them and nearly ended up going the wire transfer route. But using a credit card and reimbursing myself ended up being easier and cheaper.
- blumkvist 11y ago
  Checks are not electronic. If you shop at a store, the transaction record says what items you've bought. Nobody can stop the tax authorities demanding you to attach an invoice to every transaction a business makes. It would be trivially easy for businesses to implement it nowadays with the software they have. Many businesses do it this way already, if they use their invoicing vendor (xero,quickbooks) to accept the payment as well.
beagle3 11y ago
And also a dream of every dictatorship and totalitarian. Other than recordable or traceable, you quickly get to a point where one keypress is all that is needed to freeze someone's money. All of it. The question of abuse is not of "if", but rather of "when".
- alkonaut 11y ago
  I can't see how it's such a big difference from today? There is no way I could get my salary in cash/cheque, the only way I have of accessing my own money is via the bank it is transferred to. 99% of the time, I access it via a debit card at a. Granted, when I get cash I can buy something that can't be traced, but the cash man doesn't really care much what I buy, the VAT is taken from the store. If I was suspected of terrorism or some other crime that meant my assets should be frozen, that is a single push of a button already. I don't have a safe with cash, most people don't. Even if I had, it would be exceedingly hard to live cash-only, as any major purchase done in cash would be affected by money-laundry rules, so the tax man would certainly be informed if I bought e.g. a car cash (If I did so from a dealer I wouldn't be able to do it anonymously).
  - gambiting 11y ago
    Just because you do it that way,doesn't mean everyone does. My parents employ 130 people and they are all paid in cash.
    - alkonaut 11y ago
      That sounds like it's US or at least not north/west Europe. My point is: in Denmark/Sweden/etc, the step to cash-free isn't very big, simply because of what I mentioned: we are more or less cash free already: Salaries are paid to bank accounts and never cash/cheque (cheques don't exist), bills are paid from bank accounts and not cash Cash is tracked by anti money laundry laws and so on and so forth. So unlike in the US those prerequisites are already in place. That is why a) it's not really a giant leap to stop using cash, and b) it's not really a major privacy concern as we are already pretty much completely tracked.
Xixi 11y ago
It is a taxman dream, of course. But I would not be surprised if it was seen as largely positive by most citizens, especially the honest ones (and most citizens are honest by virtue of being salaried, with little to no room for fraud). It depends on the country of course, but tax fraud (or even tax evasion) is rarely seen as a good thing.
stevenjohns 11y ago
Contrasted with the extremist dream of the cash only society, where there is so much corruption and bureaucracy (as a defense method against corruption) that society can't properly function (see Iraq). I personally think a mix of both is good. I'm a supporter of receiving electronic payments from work, with the ability to spend it as paper if I'd want to.
hobarrera 11y ago
And this is exactly why electronic payment has such bad adoption in many places, where tax evasion is the norm (mostly underdeveloped countries, of course).

nateguchi 11y ago

I'm still waiting for receipts to go

raverbashing 11y ago

While I'm a big proponent of cards, and a firm "mythbuster" of the "getting cash is free" myth, going 100% cashless worries me a great deal. What if I'm visiting and my card is not accepted, for example? Also, this facilitates central bank policies. Like negative interest rates and lending massively to banks

alkonaut 11y ago
What is the connection betweek cash-vs.-plastic and central bank policies? Is it the amount of money held in cash? That has to be pretty small already in a place like denmark?
- raverbashing 11y ago
  "The difference to other jurisdictions is however that negative interest rates have become so pronounced, that it is by now worth it to simply withdraw one’s cash and put it into an insured vault." http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-25/war-cash-migrates-switzerland http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-25/war-cash-migrates-s...
- michaelt 11y ago
  A few days ago there was an article [1] posted here [2] about negative interest rates:- As long as paper money is available as an alternative for customers who want to withdraw their deposits, there’s a limit to how low central banks can push rates. At some point it becomes cost-effective to rent a warehouse for your billions in cash and hire armed guards to protect it. [...] Bank notes, as an alternate storehouse of value, are a constraint on central banks’ power. “We view this constraint as undesirable,” Citigroup Global Chief Economist Willem Buiter and a colleague, economist Ebrahim Rahbari, wrote in an April 8 research piece. They laid out three ways that central banks could foil cash hoarders: One, abolish paper money. Two, tax paper money. Three, sever the link between paper money and central bank reserves. Of course, inflation already serves as a tax on savings, so this isn't as radical as it sounds if governments really want to discourage saving. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/negative-interest-rates-may-spark-existential-crisis-for-cash http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/negative-i... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9496568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9496568

bodhi 11y ago

> Still, essential services like [...] chiropractors Is it just me that finds this odd? Or are Chiropractors much more common in Denmark?

emirozer 11y ago
That really is odd, considering there was never a solid proof for chiropractic procedures helping people in the long term. I may have mistaken but as far as i know its just a momentarily relief.
- Toast_ 11y ago
  Treating symptoms rather than the 'cause' is in fact common practice; Consider the case for Ambien.
maaaats 11y ago
Many chiropractors in Scandinavia are basically physiotherapists specialized in back/neck problems, so the normal criticism about chiropractors doesn't necessarily apply to them. But yeah, some of them are the same quackery as you are thinking about. Not sure why the "real" ones use the loaded name.

skrebbel 11y ago

For me, cash payments mean privacy (at least until all shops have facebook-uplinked facial recognition cameras installed in every corner). But then again, Danes never seemed to care much about privacy (you can look up a person's address and all kinds of personal data if you know their social security number, for example), so I doubt there's going to be much backlash.

alkonaut 11y ago
There is nothing that says that cash-free also implies that all payments are transferred via credit card companies and banks that record everything. A cheaper system for small payments via some form of "electronic cash" needs to be added to the mix. If we are in luck, that system is invented by someone other than a credit card system, bank, or Apple.
- Tomte 11y ago
  It has existed for a long time now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geldkarte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geldkarte No one uses it.
- collyw 11y ago
  It probably does exist. But when Apple do it the media will be in awe of how Apple is revolutionizing payments.
wodenokoto 11y ago
> you can look up a person's address and all kinds of personal data if you know their social security number, for example Other people aren't supposed to know your SSN. A former police officer who was fed up with the poor security surrounding some online government service managed to extract and publish the prime ministers SSN and got in a lot of trouble.
- hultner 11y ago
  I think this differs widely from country to country. Here in Sweden our SSN equivalent (personnummer) is public information accessible to anyone by calling calling the register office and today even via various third party online services.

walterbell 11y ago

Week-old discussion (142 comments) on cash and negative interest rates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9496568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9496568

ghostberry 11y ago

How do you give money to a poor homeless person?

necrodawg 11y ago
It said Denmark, not the USA. People here have homes.
- ghostberry 11y ago
  30 seconds of searching later http://udenfor.dk/uk/Menu/News/The+number+of+homeless+people+in+Denmark http://udenfor.dk/uk/Menu/News/The+number+of+homeless+people...
  - Squarel 11y ago
    He did not say no one is homeless. The number of people you see sitting on the street begging in a Danish city vs the number in a US location is vastly different. Homeless people in DK often sell a magazine, and you can pay for this using a mobile.

onion2k 11y ago

The rise of electronic payment could also raise privacy concerns, but Hahn said these pale in comparison to what it would mean for state revenues. Those two things appear related but they really aren't. The claim that you need a detailed record of all transactions in order to maximise tax revenue and stop crime is wrong; you only need a record of the financial aspect - the value of the transaction, when it happened, what was purchased, and what tax was due. You don't need any information about who bought the items to ensure the tax is collected properly. You could have a cashless society that respects privacy by making a legal requirement for the details of who made a transaction to be stored separately and anonymously to the tax reporting information. If Denmark's system doesn't do that then they have made a choice to deliberately limit people's privacy. Suggesting privacy has to be compromised in order to report tax receipts properly is nonsense.

flurdy 11y ago

Im all for it. I moved back to Norway for a few years (2006) and most of the time there I only carried my debit card and no cash. I sometimes had a 200kr note in the same card sleeve for emergencies, but think I only used it once or twice in the 5-6 years I was there. Even remote pop up cafes/hot dog stands in the middle of nowhere took chip and pin cards. It annoyed when I moved back to the UK that I had to start carry cash again as most corner shops in the UK have a minimum spend of £5 for cards. For valid reasons as in the UK the card providers charge a much higher fee than in Norway but it generally makes me avoid those shops. The spread of contactless cards are also a blessing (in the UK and Norway). Paying for kids ride on stationary cars in shopping centres, even quick charity donations, etc are all great friction removing innovations. (http://www.fundraising.co.uk/2015/01/22/cruk-trials-contactless-giving-through-the-charity-shop-window/ http://www.fundraising.co.uk/2015/01/22/cruk-trials-contactl...)

learnstats2 11y ago
> the card providers charge a much higher fee I suggest that card providers would charge an even higher fee if nobody was using cash.

xycodex 11y ago

Bad idea. Cash is the ultimate failure mode for on-site payment systems. What if the internet/phones went out? What if I'm visiting from abroad and my card is declined for potential fraud?

hobarrera 11y ago
Lots of places already fail to generate invoices with no internet/electricity, so there really no new issue here. Besides, I expect countries like Denmark don't have power/internet outages as often us we do in underdeveloped countries. Also, you can notify your bank if you're travelling abroad so they don't reject anything. It's actually mandatory for some banks.

lyschoening 11y ago

I still carry a single note around with me here as a backup, but I rarely have to use it. What has really advanced the process in recent years is MobilePay, a mobile app that let's anyone send money to anyone else with a phone number, provided they also have the app. As for privacy concerns - my guess is criminals and those with privacy concerns will resort to pooling payments in some way - e.g. by converting it to some virtual currency and then back again. The tracking of regular people's transactions is of course getting much much easier.

tsotha 11y ago
That's a good point. The criminals will always find a way around it. They'll do business in stacks of euros or dollars. You can get rid of the official currency, but there will always be people using some kind of currency. Currency from some other country, drugs, precious metals. Even favors. The only people who will be completely locked in are the 9-5 types.

plesner 11y ago

I'm Danish and I find this thoroughly distressing. The payment processor, Nets, is a monopoly, owned by US investment firms. They have frequent outages and are unapologetic when they do. There is no transparency. They have a terrible privacy record (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Se_og_H%C3%B8r_media_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Se_og_H%C3%B8r_media_scan...). Until last year everyone down to their phone support staff had open access to everyone's payment records (see http://www.computerworld.dk/art/230818/alle-kundeservice-folk-i-nets-har-adgang-til-foelsomme-kort-data http://www.computerworld.dk/art/230818/alle-kundeservice-fol... -- in Danish). Despite all these issues they just laid off a bunch of people. Their only priority, it appears, it making money for the owners. Money is a critical piece of infrastructure and these guys absolutely cannot be trusted to implement it. With more payment processors and a regulatory framework that forced them to provide decent service maybe cashless is not a bad idea. With the current implementation though there's a good chance it will be a disaster. It will certainly be a gaping vulnerability for anyone who should feel like targeting us; I wouldn't be surprised if all it would take to bring the whole thing down is one lone hacker.

sumedh 11y ago
India developed its own payment network called Rupay although adoption is a bit slow among the masses. Denmark should create its own network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPay
- plesner 11y ago
  It is homegrown. The Dankort was a government initiative originally built and paid for by a consortium of banks back in the 80s. The theory was that the savings for the banks from having a more efficient alternative to cash would pay for the development costs, which is exactly how it turned out. But then the banks forgot that what they spent on payment processing they made back elsewhere and wanted it to pay for itself, and started cutting costs. Finally last year they sold the whole thing off to the US. In addition, the dankort is strictly regulated to the benefit of consumers which the banks dislike because it limits how much they can charge when you use it. They have an interest in pushing people to visa or mastercard or their own mobile payment solutions which don't have the same restrictions. The payment processor itself is developing their own alternative to compete with the dankort which they are mandated to also implement. I don't think they provide bad dankort service on purpose but it's a concern that good service is actually against their own economic interest.

Htsthbjig 11y ago

Going to the store and having a problem with one of the products, we looked at the registry of all my last purchases(that got recorded for using a discount card) so they could see I was right. Just looking at the list it felt so wrong. Everything I bought, with the day on it, the person that attended me FOR YEARS. I mean, they had all this information about me that even I do not have about myself so they could study me like a Guinea Pig. Governments are collecting more information about us that the Stasi or KGB. Transcribing our phone conversations, our GPS position, and now everything we buy, where we buy it, when we buy it and soon with whom we do it. This is a serious problem. We are predators by nature, the first thing hunters do is study the habits of their victims so they can find vulnerabilities. Too much power in a few hands. This people also have the power to make money, and want to ban cash so they can force you interest in your own savings(negative interest or tax your money).

raverbashing 11y ago
that got recorded for using a discount card And now you know what's the purpose of a discount card

anon4 11y ago

What if I want to give 20 quid to a friend? The thing that worries me the most about cashless is how it makes it extremely hard to give money to others -- each transfer needs to be a bank transfer and if I want to give you money, you need to be carrying a device approved by the bank, into which I can insert my card, write my PIN, etc., etc. Unless you can show me how person-to-person money transfer will work, I'm not convinced cashless will work. Also, I don't agree with having to pay to pay, i.e. the "x%" tax on each purchase the bank takes.

useerup 11y ago
Two very popular apps in Denmark are "Mobilepay" and "Swipp". You download an app and connect it to your bank account (typically by means of a plastic card). It is extremely easy to make person-person or person-business payments with the apps. You only need to know the phone number of the recipient. The transfer is immediate and the recipient gets a receipt on through his/her app in seconds. It has become a very popular way to settle smaller amounts between friends, restaurant bills etc. It is actually easier than cash since you do not need small change.

MrZongle2 11y ago

"Dad, can I have my allowance?" "Sure, let me just find my phone....ok, firing up my MobilPay app...selecting your name from my contacts....entering amount of $10....entering my PIN for confirmation.....whoops. Getting an error. Let me try again. Uh oh, looks like the service is down at the moment. Sorry, son...you'll have to wait. Maybe it will be back up in an hour or so." (If you don't have kids, substitute with a yard sale/flea market, handout to a panhandler, impromptu purchase at a food truck, repayment of a small loan to a friend, etc...) Mountain of privacy horrors aside, a cashless society still looks like hell if you need to engage in a transaction with anybody or anything that doesn't have a card reader. And the solution is neither "don't have those transactions" nor "add more card readers".

cjsthompson 11y ago

The real reason they are going through with this is so the mafias that are called states can police everything you do with your money. It's just as unnacceptable as electronic voting machines and should be opposed at all costs.