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Swedes turn against cashlessness

theguardian.com

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Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#171

Post by herbst »

optimusrex wrote: post #2

As an American, now living in Europe I cannot understand the pushback against cashless systems. In Germany almost every cafe, restaurant, or bar requires you pay with cash. I understand there is a slight charge to the vendor when charging to a credit or bank card, but the amount of time and energy saved by having "exact change" every transaction should increase productivity enough to cover any costs.

This is on one side for tax avoidance reasons. But on the other side everyone I know working in gastronomy rages about Americans and their aggressive credit card usage, how slow usually the process is (these people are trained with cash, plus nearly anywhere in Europe you round the sum to something easy to give out anyway as a tip).

From what I can tell these people simply prefer cash. I just asked and my gf said it's just a lot faster to do it by hand.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#172

Post by rahikainen »

Redklao wrote: post #146
rahikainen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not in Sweden, it isn't. Ad hominem all the way." Maybe innovative in importing rapists and terrorists. Yeah job well done.

You mean your fellow Finns that are the largest group of immigrants and that have been overrepresented in crime statistics?

Oh wow. Tried to figure that out from my username? Nice. Except I'm actually from Turkey, but I've been living 15 years in Finland. Good try though.

In almost every single case the foreigners are more likely to commit crimes in a country than the native population. This is completely natural due to cultural differences and being unaware of some special laws etc. Also Swedes are significantly overrepresented in Finnish crime statistics (3-4 times more likely to commit crimes than native Finns, Americans 2-3 times).

Now let's stop pretending like we don't know what's this about. Middle-Eastern (including Turkey where I'm from) and African immigrants are clearly the biggest criminal group in almost every single crime type. Especially serious offenses like rape, murder, assault etc. 15-20 times more likely to commit serious crimes. That's what I mean and that's what the statistics and research conclusively show.

Quite irresponsible to try to compare some Finns getting parking tickets to organized crime and terrorism.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#173

Post by dalbasal »

Good. The cashless drive gives me the creeps.

1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending.

2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for).

3 - Government control is creepy too. Liberty reasons, privacy reasons, single-point-of failure reasons. Just simple competency reasons.

4 - It advantages big firms relative to small ones who pay lower fees for better service, and continues the trend to bigger firms. How does a cashless lemonade stand work?

Most transactions already are cashless, and all the rules around these are run by the banking-regulator-government complex. They wield tremendous control, and decide a lot about how businesses should run.

Remember paypal confiscating aid money, kickstarters and such... to be released gradually and when paypal was convinced that it should be? They basically decide which transactions should happen. This does not work on an innocent-until-guilty basis.

We've had a lot of financial regulation recently, bleeding way past the financial sectors. AML or whatnot. The lawyers love it because it's lawyerly, and demands lawyers. Governments love it because it because it makes everything auditable, in theory. Tax evasion, funding terrorism, buying grass become impossible. The big financial firms (especially CCs) love it because it entrenches their oligopolies. Big regular firm love it because they are good at bureaucracy and incumbents are not.

The bitcoin failure (I think it is) teaches something. People don't really give each other money. It's kind of illegal. Money is supposed to move between people and companies or companies and companies, not between people. There is no demand for Peter-pays-Paul.

I don't see any upside at all for, dare I say... we the people.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#174

Post by 87812487 »

mrmekon wrote: post #162
imartin2k wrote: post #153

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.

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…

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.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#175

Post by dalbasal »

mistermann wrote: post #169
imartin2k wrote: post #153

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.

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

These will be provided by a municipal body in cities from now on, parochial for rural areas.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#176

Post by logfromblammo »

iamatworknow wrote: post #164
EarthMephit wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller resturants prefer cash, because it allows them to evade taxes by underquoting their profits. The same reason that builders quote less for "cash only" prices This is one of the main reasons that governments are pushing for cashless systems, because there is less evetax evasion and increased revenue

Along those same lines if I'm going out to eat somewhere that accepts credit cards I will almost always pay the bill with the card and tip the server in cash. They can just pocket the cash and as far as the restaurant knows they didn't receive a tip (that would otherwise be taxed).

If you don't add a tip to the credit receipt, the IRS will estimate a tip value for tax purposes. I don't know the exact amount, but I think it's around 10%. If you are intent upon helping service staff evade taxes, the optimal strategy would therefore be to put 10% on the receipt and drop the remainder on the table in cash.

This also means that if you stiff your server and leave no tip, they are still getting taxed as though you left 10%. If you really want to be a jerk, be slightly less of a jerk by leaving a $0.01 tip on the receipt. This will also allow them to post it to outrage-fueled social media for a tiny bit of temporary fame.

Most people aren't that invested into stigginit to da Man, or at least not just via their restaurant tips. You'd be better off paying cash for everything, no-receipt requested, and not involving the electronic point-of-sale till at all.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#177

Post by StavrosK »

robotmay wrote: post #56
ciocan42 wrote: post #20

From what I've seen here in London (UK), mostly tourists use cash. Everybody else uses contactless payments. You can pay with contactless cards or apple/android pay on the public transport or on your corner grocery store. And with the new fin-tech banks like Monzo, Starling or Revolut the banking apps are light years ahead of traditional banks.

I was quite an early user of Revolut and I do feel like they're gradually ruining their service at the moment. I would actually say that my bank (NatWest) has a better mobile experience than them right now. Revolut seem to spend all their time coming up with new marketing schemes to shill cheap partnership products, like phone insurance or health insurance, rather than improving their core product. Their interface se…

That's exactly why I moved to N26 as well. I referred a bunch of people to Revolut early on as well, but their service feels pretty scammy now.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#178

Post by jacobush »

padobson wrote: post #80
jacobush wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it may be "good for the economy" if "good" is "more money being spent". But that's too valueless for my taste. A stupid utility function. If you by "economy" mean as a metric for other utility in the society, then, spending money on stupid stuff, is just akin to digging holes and then filling them again. Only that, the holes are very elaborate. (Like perfumes or stupid shit like a metric crap ton of TVs nobody…

spending money on stupid stuff The problem here, as with any economic ideas, is properly defining "stupid stuff". Value has to be defined on an individual basis. If someone gets more entertainment from digging holes and filling them with dirt than using their phone, then hole digging doesn't seem like such pointless endeavor. The hole digger will probably end up in better health than the phone user, too, so it's not…

I agree, though I think we have plenty of real problems left to solve still. We are not quite at Star Trek level economy, where hole digging might make even more sense.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#179

Post by imartin2k »

mrmekon wrote: post #162
imartin2k wrote: post #153

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.

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…

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...)

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.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#180

Post by nearmuse »

Looks like most people in this comments section are afraid to pass for a luddite if they don't support cashless transactions. But the argument about centralized system watching every payment you make is still valid. Why are people so eager to jump off something and irreversibly lose its good properties (anonymity, decentralization and reliability in case of analogue money) and that just for the sake of minor comfort? The idea of all that data about my shopping habits and credit history being held and possibly judged by someone makes me cringe. Apparently all this recent Facebook business and all similar cases teach people nothing. They hope that being a good boy/gal and having nothing to hide is all they and subsequent generations need, forever.
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