Why on earth is this considered a good thing? Haven't we learned anything about mass surveillance in the last five years?
Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
11–20 of 74 posts
Re: Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
#12Ehhhhhh I think Britain is closer. Contactless payment methods are significantly more common in London. (In fact you'd be hard pressed to say a business which doesn't accept contactless /and/ Apple Pay) I live in Sweden and there are places that won't take VISA- and banks only give out mastercards which cost the consumer monthly. Not to mention the fact that contactless and Apple Pay are nowhere to be found. Maybe it…
I can't speak to Sweden, but I don't think that London is really representative of the rest of the UK. It might be a case where the average lags behind the leader?
Re: Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
#13In a cashless society all transactions are controlled and monitored by third parties. There is no potential for individual volition except at the whim of those controlling the systems. Cryptocurrencies will mitigate this slightly but the loss of cash is going to be a huge blow to the individual.
I find this approach really curious. All the transactions can be monitored by third parties anyway as all the pos systems are networked and subject to even lesser legal scrutiny than banks. Random adverisers can and do build comprehensive profiles. A company is us claims to have full profiles of all Americans. And yet, if there's a chance a citizen might benefit either via less hassle as in the cash case or via bette…
I think GP's point re cash was just that cash transactions are typically anonymous. Obviously you can get around that by e.g. matching up till receipts against video surveillance and facial recognition tech, but I'm not aware that that happens routinely, so in practice you probably have a fair degree of privacy.
Re: Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
#14Why on earth is this considered a good thing? Haven't we learned anything about mass surveillance in the last five years?
That's something to be worried about. But I'm more worried about banks having the power to issue unlimited currency which is a default in a cashless society
Re: Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
#15In Norway I know only a single shop that still does not accept cards, perhaps on principle. Even farmers selling fruits and vegetables often have a card reader.
However many shops accept only cards from Norway that are connected to the BankAccept system which are significantly cheaper for a shop to accept than credit cards.
Also as a sign of times street musicians sometimes write their phone number for Vipps, a local payment system that allows to send money just by knowing a phone number.
Still the country is far from cachless judging by the number of professional beggars in big cities. Somehow they make a living so people still curry coins.
Re: Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
#16Ehhhhhh I think Britain is closer. Contactless payment methods are significantly more common in London. (In fact you'd be hard pressed to say a business which doesn't accept contactless /and/ Apple Pay) I live in Sweden and there are places that won't take VISA- and banks only give out mastercards which cost the consumer monthly. Not to mention the fact that contactless and Apple Pay are nowhere to be found. Maybe it…
There's a big difference between "accepts contactless" and "cashless", though. I live in London and still use cash exclusively for in-person transactions, and I've never had a problem.
I think London is just unusually accommodating when it comes to taking people's money. Quite a few of the big shops in Oxford Street accept paper Euros, which doesn't really fit the "going cashless" narrative.
Re: Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
#17The busses have refused cash for years now, mostly for security reasons. But the other day one of my favorite cafés also declined the kingly payment method. A good sign indeed. :) A perhaps even better one is that one of the lunch places I go to no-longer requires my pin code when I pay by card. :D Progress! :)
This sounds horrifying.
Re: Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
#18As I see it, this has the potential of being a disaster for certain groups of people in the society. Old and poor. And there are no free solutions, you have to spend to spend. The old paypal tax but on every purchase you do. There are problems with this that has to be solved before it's implemented but aren't yet there for the early adopters, which may then leave too many people behind. These are some of my concerns, but what do I know...
Re: Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
#19The busses have refused cash for years now, mostly for security reasons. But the other day one of my favorite cafés also declined the kingly payment method. A good sign indeed. :) A perhaps even better one is that one of the lunch places I go to no-longer requires my pin code when I pay by card. :D Progress! :)
So not only can you not get on a bus without your movements being logged in a commercial database, but now you can't even buy a coffee without that happening too. And you call that "progress" ?
Re: Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
#20Ehhhhhh I think Britain is closer. Contactless payment methods are significantly more common in London. (In fact you'd be hard pressed to say a business which doesn't accept contactless /and/ Apple Pay) I live in Sweden and there are places that won't take VISA- and banks only give out mastercards which cost the consumer monthly. Not to mention the fact that contactless and Apple Pay are nowhere to be found. Maybe it…
I moved from Stockholm to Edinburgh about a year ago and I definitely use cash a lot more here. Sure contactless is more widespread, but a lot of places don't accept cards or have a minimum spend amount for card transactions. When I lived in Stockholm I believe I went 6 months without handling any cash, here I can barely last a day without it.
Same, I cannot remember when I used cash the last time, but I think it's more than 9 months ago.