Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Swedes turn against cashlessness

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 357 posts

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#241

Post by deaddodo »

Symbiote wrote: post #230
dalbasal wrote: post #173

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…

1. Can your cash do this? [1] A breakdown of spending by my internet bank, by category. 4. In Sweden, and some other European countries (and China?) a lemonade stand works by person-to-person bank transfers, initiated using a mobile phone app. The Swedish one is called Swish, but I link to the Danish one [2] as they have an English explanation. People really do use these apps for things like lemonade stands. I've see…

> 4. In Sweden, and some other European countries (and China?) a lemonade stand works by person-to-person bank transfers, initiated using a mobile phone app. The Swedish one is called Swish, but I link to the Danish one [2] as they have an English explanation.

The United States has this via Venmo. But Venmo doesn't replace business transactions, only personal ones.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#242

Post by powvans »

dalbasal wrote: post #173

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…

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.

That last bit, that's a profound observation. There is some real demand, but not much. More so there is theoretical demand. In theory I want the option to pay with cash because dammit I want that last vestige of freedom from being tracked and taxed.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. -Goethe

Cash is an important palliative for the feeling that perhaps we aren't as free as we would like to believe.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#243

Post by drexlspivey »

reaperducer wrote: post #203
skrause wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). Not in the European Union where this fee is capped to 0,3%.

When it's free in the EU, then you'll have a point. Until then you're not addressing his argument.

Why would it be free? Shouldn't you pay for the service?

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#244

Post by juliango »

skrause wrote: post #192
dalbasal wrote: post #173

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…

> 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). Not in the European Union where this fee is capped to 0,3%.

Do you have a source for this? I never heard it before.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#245

Post by lainga »

drexlspivey wrote: post #243
reaperducer wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it's free in the EU, then you'll have a point. Until then you're not addressing his argument.

Why would it be free? Shouldn't you pay for the service?

Why shouldn't it be free? Would you accept an inescapable 0.3% tax on everything you bought?

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#246

Post by Symbiote »

koolba wrote: post #238
Symbiote wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Can your cash do this? [1] A breakdown of spending by my internet bank, by category. 4. In Sweden, and some other European countries (and China?) a lemonade stand works by person-to-person bank transfers, initiated using a mobile phone app. The Swedish one is called Swish, but I link to the Danish one [2] as they have an English explanation. People really do use these apps for things like lemonade stands. I've see…

> [1] http://i.imgur.com/Smkim6Vr.png Is this month's data an outlier or do you really spend $1000/month on fast food?!

It's in Danish crowns, so more like $150, and I also moved it away from a month.

Also, I can recategorize any transaction, or all transactions from any merchant. I think I set the canteen at work to "fast food", as it's a food category I almost never spend in otherwise.

(The interface is the default view of my online banking, but otherwise, I don't use it. It's very swish, but fortunately I don't need to budget this way.)

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#247

Post by notahacker »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #143
tigershark wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s at least a 30 seconds difference. You need to read the amount, extract your wallet, check if you have the exact amount of money to avoid filling your wallet with useless coins, 90% of the time you realise that you don’t have it and you start fumbling between your notes to find the correct amount that can give you a reasonable change. At that point you can start to have fun fighting with the machine that won’t ac…

You don't need to do any of that. It's a machine that makes exact change. Is your purchase $52.27 but in your wallet you have 39 cents in coins and $64 in bills? Counting is for computers. Just dump the contents of your wallet into the machine and let it figure it out. And you can't count processing failures on one side but not the other. The machine can't read your card. The network is down. Some jerk at the bank fa…

Have you not used a modern contactless payment system before? They're fast enough to be used on the barriers of underground railway systems which see thousands of passengers pass through at peak times. Even the time taken to empty the contents of your wallet into the appropriate slot of a cash system takes longer than those machines, never mind time taken to process the notes and coins, dispense change and allow you to put that change back in the appropriate compartments of your wallet. And change-dispensing machines with their scanning software, moving parts and need to be fully stocked with change break down at least as often as networks for card based payments.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#248

Post by Annorax »

imartin2k wrote: post #229
mrmekon wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, true, that's somewhat better. But it's the principle of a privately-owned monopoly or oligopoly skimming profits off of a nation's economy that bothers me, not the absolute amount. As the other response to my comment said, cash itself has an overhead cost, too. But that cost is paid to our government at break-even cost, instead of to a private company for profit. If Visa and Mastercard had plenty of competition…

Yeah I tried to find the rates that Swish charges to businesses but didn't find them (although didn't look to thoroughly either). But can it really be even below the 0,2% of cap for debit cards?

Swish is 1 to 2 SEK (2 being the list price that can be negotiated) per transaction. Then swish has a daily cap of payments you as user can do of 150k SEK (system limit, not a soft cap that the user can remove).

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#249

Post by otakucode »

dalbasal wrote: post #173

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…

I keep waiting for the government to realize that "payment processors" have far more power to regulate the monetary supply than the federal central bank does. We've handed over the majority of transactions to these groups that charge a percentage based, I suppose, on the notion that transferring a larger number over a wire is significantly more difficult than transferring a smaller one. So if they want to set the nations monetary policy, they will. Want to increase the supply of money? Good luck if the payment processors decide to bump their cut up to compensate. Want to decrease it? Good luck when they bump their cut down to keep things as they are.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#250

Post by arghwhat »

dalbasal wrote: post #173

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…

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.

In Denmark, the MobilePay system is massive, and challenging credit card payments.

It is designed entirely for person-to-person payments, and only later added support for shop purchases as a lower-priority feature. It is used for all sorts of things, including splitting bills and selling used goods, all legal.

Sweden has Swish, but I never figured out if it was popular. MobilePay, on the other hand, is huge.

Edit: "Swipp" -> "Swish". Swipp is dead.

Post reply on HN