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

Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

weforum.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 628 posts

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#191

Post by microcolonel »

kristofferR wrote: post #97

I'm a Norwegian who went to a Swedish music festival last summer. I couldn't pay for a lot of things there, since the booths only accepted Swish (the only relevant Swedish mobile payment solution, it's a de facto monopoly). I couldn't sign up and use Swish on my phone, since it only accepts Swedish bank accounts. I couldn't borrow money from my Swedish friends either, since they didn't have cash (and it mostly wasn't…

Every time people talk about a cashless society, I tell them about stuff like this both abstractly and concretely, and then I just get called a luddite. I think, unfortunately, that people will have to learn this lesson the hard way. I don't own a working smartphone, my last one (like the one before it) failed randomly in the display, and was unjustifiably difficult to RMA (no box provided, no postage, unclear details on how to mark). I don't get why people want to use these cumbersome, life-running pocket computers to control access to their money on a day-to-day basis. Here in

Canada we have Interac, which is mostly everywhere, but we also have cash, and three or four credit networks (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and sometimes Discover). There are only really three physical modes of operation, and they all have a time and a place: Tap card 95% of the time, insert and use pin when fraud detection gets a funny feeling, and use cash when all else fails (because sometimes that means you have to call up your creditor's fraud department and let them know you're just on a roadtrip, your card hasn't been stolen).

I don't think requiring a smartphone to accomplish what chip & pin and NFC cards do just fine is an upgrade.

Then these people talk about making state payment processors. What happens when fraud prevention completely stops you from being able trade any money? Do they drive out to fix your problem on the spot? How on earth could they expect that to work out well?

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#192

Post by millettjon »

samontar wrote: post #160
bouncycastle wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to share about my experience about the "permission" part. I once travelled to Beijing and had dinner in a fancy dumpling restaurant. When I went to pay the bill, my European bank instantly flagged the transaction and blocked my card from further use. I had no idea what happened until I called the bank later that evening (had to wait until they opened). So yeah, what you said happened to me - revoked instantly, s…

That’s anti-fraud to stop someone from stealing your card and using it elsewhere. You can usually pre-empt that by informing the bank of travel.

In my experience, informing the bank of travel makes no difference. They block regardless even when I inform and even for foreign charges that appear with regular frequency.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#193

Post by alkonaut »

fernly wrote: post #6

Hmmm... quote, > The basic concept for e-krona is as follows: it would be digital, and have a 1-to-1 conversion with an ordinary krona held in an account at the Riksbank or stored locally, for example on a card or in a mobile phone app. > The technology to build a functioning e-krona is already available today. It is not dependent on using distributed ledger technology and it is not to be confused with cryptocurrenci…

You can get anonymous spending (the benefit of cash) only with a distributed ledger.

A centralized ledger would just be regular debit cards but would bypass the banks/visa/mastercard. It offers the benefit of non-cash (no physical currency) but not the benefits of cash (anonymity).

I hope we can get the benefit of both. My money stored on a card or gadget in my pocket instead of printed, but also chargeable through atms or internet banks so that the spending is anonymous.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#194

Post by irascible »

dysan819 wrote: post #163
yellow_postit wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how Sweden in this case is enforcing the cashless trends through surveillance or coercion.

You have a severe lack of imagination. You must be fun at parties. There are a myriad of ways Sweden can and probably is enforcing cashless trends through surveillance and coercion. Encouraging banks and retailers to refuse cash services, as referenced in the article, is likely done by the government. This enhances their ability to track and control all monetary transactions for any number of reasons (nefarious or ot…

Sound like you have an overactive imagination, and are probably Not fun at parties. I imagine you said the same thing about email, and continue to hand write all your correspondence to keep it out of the gubmints hands?

Physical money is disgusting. Might as well use poo sticks as currency...

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#195

Post by illumin8 »

reaperducer wrote: post #143
eksemplar wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s festival payment done wrong, but cashless can be really great at festivals. In Denmark we have a festival called Skanderborg festival, and they build both your ticket and your cashless payment into the festival bracelet. You use the bracelet to pay everywhere, and you can add money to it a range of payment methods, from using a visa or similar in their app, to visiting one of the cash places where you can use…

In Denmark we have a festival called Skanderborg festival, and they build both your ticket and your cashless payment into the festival bracelet. Disney does that at Disneyland and Disney World in America: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/plan/my-disney-experience/... You can also use it to unlock you hotel room and to link to those photographs that are taken of you when you're on the rides.

The main difference being that Disney has multiple backup systems, including switching to a completely manual process in case their network or servers are offline.

I watched a presentation on this, and it's actually very interesting how they manage the ride experience so that even during a system outage they can still let people get on the rides.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#196

Post by go_blue_13 »

bamboozled wrote: post #135
eksemplar wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s festival payment done wrong, but cashless can be really great at festivals. In Denmark we have a festival called Skanderborg festival, and they build both your ticket and your cashless payment into the festival bracelet. You use the bracelet to pay everywhere, and you can add money to it a range of payment methods, from using a visa or similar in their app, to visiting one of the cash places where you can use…

The best payment experience I’ve had is cash. I pay for what I need and when I leave the festival I can still use my “credits” hassle free anywhere I like.

What a novel idea

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#197

Post by monochromatic »

dysan819 wrote: post #163
yellow_postit wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how Sweden in this case is enforcing the cashless trends through surveillance or coercion.

You have a severe lack of imagination. You must be fun at parties. There are a myriad of ways Sweden can and probably is enforcing cashless trends through surveillance and coercion. Encouraging banks and retailers to refuse cash services, as referenced in the article, is likely done by the government. This enhances their ability to track and control all monetary transactions for any number of reasons (nefarious or ot…

> You must be fun at parties.

Can we, as a society, just stop saying that?

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#198

Post by illumin8 »

mrb wrote: post #104
CPLX wrote: post #14

A society without cash is a society in which every person has no choice but to get the permission of someone they don’t know and will never meet each and every time they seek to obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation, and that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time.

« that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time » Yes, "permission" is the right vocabulary to use in this instance. In fact, the opposite, being "permissionless", is exactly one of the main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. This is why cryptocurrencies should be seen as competing with cash, and not wi…

The term I like to use is "censorship resistant." Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies have this property.

The idea is that no central authority can censor your right to spend money.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#199

Post by go_blue_13 »

dasil003 wrote: post #168
sparkie wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ask the questions about whether it should or should not enable crime, but the question is useless, because it doesn't address whether it can or cannot enable crime. When you ask this question, you come to the conclusion that it can enable crime. So then you might argue that if it can enable crime, we must do something about it. Admirable ideas, but you then need to ask the question, can we do anything about i…

You're fooling yourself if you believe nothing can be done about Bitcoin. If the powers that be want it dead they'll outlaw it, and that's effectively game over for any kind of common transaction system. The reason it hasn't so far is because there are too many rich and powerful speculators involved, but those winds could change in a hurry so I wouldn't get too cocky.

Yeah this is wrong. Bitcoin is everywhere, not just in the US, and there's no way in hell going to be a worldwide coordinated crackdown. And as long as people are running nodes, Bitcoin isn't going anywhere.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#200

Post by mrb »

mamon wrote: post #172
mrb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« Until you realize that >90% of Bitcoin hashing power is controlled by a handful of Chinese guys » It's false. You are repeating a sadly misunderstood aspect of pooled mining. Articles writing such sensationalist claims are written by people who don't understand that a mining pool representing x% of the hash rate doesn't mean they "control" x% of the hash rate. Their end-users, who are distributed around the world,…

>> users around the world would abandon it and point their miners at more trustworthy pools. This is not as easy as you try to paint it, because mining requires hardware, and you can't just move it around the world at will - most of it is physically located in China, and that's not gonna change.

Another misconception. Changing mining pool is done by changing a single parameter in the mining software. It is as easy as it sounds. There is no need to "move hardware".

It is not true that "most" mining hardware is located in China. There is a good portion of it over there for sure, but because of the secrecy around most miners, we don't know how much exactly. It's certainly not ">90%".

Every single article that makes similar claims mistakenly assumes that for example it the AntPool Chinese pool represents 20% of the hashrate, then it means this hardware is located in China. This is patently false. AntPool is one of the most popular pools for various reasons (reliability, availability, flexibility, branding), so they are used by many users worldwide. They even have stratum endpoints in the US for their North American users. Only a fraction of the AntPool hashrate comes from hardware physically located in China.

Post reply on HN