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Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’

nytimes.com

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Re: Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’

#61

Post by jpatokal »

miohtama wrote: post #58
Orphis wrote: post #36

The major issue I see regarding a cash-free society (which I am part of by living in Sweden) is that it puts a big burden on tourists who have to pay a huge amount of fees when using their own cards in a different currency. It is also a bit similar for expats who, under certain conditions, can't apply for a Swedish person number (think SSN) and thus get a fully activated bank account. No bank account? Good luck doing…

This is untrue. For tourists and Visa/MasterCard paying with a card is usually cheaper than withdrawing foreign cash at ATM. With ATM you are slapped with a foreign withdrawal fee and you usually get worse exchange rate.

Depends on your credit card: it's not uncommon for them to also slap you with foreign transaction fees of 3% or higher.

In general, the hierarchy of fees is no-fee CC < regular CC < ATM withdrawal < exchange cash at destination < exchange cash somewhere else.

Re: Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’

#62

Post by zeroname »

Svoka wrote: post #56
EZ-E wrote: post #14

Looking at what China is doing is gonna give them more ammunition. I used to love digital payment but I'm getting increasingly wary of it. Look what big private companies did with our data, what will happen when they have all your purchase history and when your daily life depends on them approving your transactions? It's too much power. Look at the many horror stories of people getting their money locked out in Paypa…

Thankfully Sweden got GDPR, which protects from collecting data "just because you can".

> Thankfully Sweden got GDPR, which protects from collecting data "just because you can".

Not really.

https://blog.instantor.com/ultimate-guide-gdpr-impacts-on-cr...

Re: Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’

#64

Post by PeterisP »

foldr wrote: post #24
davedx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the systems are pretty robust by any measure. I've never had a card reader in the Netherlands fail and had to pay with cash before. I have seen ATM's out of order a couple of times though. If the payment networks all go down, I imagine you'd also have trouble withdrawing cash from an ATM too. What's the alternative? Cash under your mattress for a rainy day? Do you think the value of cash would be stable enoug…

>What's the alternative? Withdrawing it from a bank branch.

Banks in the region generally are moving towards cashless branches. You go to a branch to handle agreements, disputes, loans, investments - it's a location for sales and customer service.

If you need to withdraw or deposit cash, that's done in ATMs, the branch generally has one, but if the card services are down then the ATM will be as well.

Re: Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’

#66

Post by PeterisP »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #35
mtgx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continuing to use cash should be a national security issue, just like for instance, using open source software is starting to be in some places. Any country that wants to get rid of cash is just making it easy for future rival nations to cripple its economy with a hack or two.

But why couldn't the government just keep cash on hand in some central location (eg. Fort Knox in USA) and in case of a total system failure have a plan to quickly distribute it across the country. I mean if Amazon can get me socks in 48 hours, I'm pretty sure the govt of nearly any 1st world country could get cash to central repositories in a matter of hours with enough planning.

To whom you'd distribute that cash? If you have some service that can tell that I should have $1000 and which can record that you've given me $1000 which should later be deducted from my account #XYZ, then it implies that you have a fully functional e-payment system which can service most people, so you don't need the cash; and if the e-payment systems aren't functioning, then you can't do this distribution of cash.

Re: Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’

#67

Post by toadi »

robbiep wrote: post #4

The interesting component to this is what happens when the payment system $hits the bed. 3 weeks ago last friday and saturday in sydney the communications system underlying about 50% of all financial transactions (taxi card readers, many ATMs, many businesses) collapsed with the result that if you didn't have cash you couldn't make an exchange. How robust do people really think these systems are? I certainly have no…

In Belgium the payment processor crashes every year around X-mas. Can't use your card in the shop doing X-mas shopping, no cash from the ATM. Fun times and every year in the news :)

Re: Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’

#68

Post by PeterisP »

kungtotte wrote: post #46
willvarfar wrote: post #43

Anecdotally, I don't know of any Swedish consumers saying "not so fast!". Even the pensioners I know do their parking with the kommun's parking app and love swish etc. Myself, I last used a banknote... at least over a year ago. I think I did use some coins (which luckily I still had in the glovebox of my car) in an old-fashioned parking machine recently.

Look beyond your bubble. I use cash nearly every day and I see plenty of transactions in cash around me. It's still alive and well. Do you live in a city?

Most people live in cities, and the share is continuously growing.

Re: Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’

#69

Post by PeterisP »

ubernostrum wrote: post #12
toxik wrote: post #7

I see a lot of people worry about "what if the connectivity breaks," but truth be told, I had a lot more fuzz with physical money than digital. I put away a small sum as a contingency for exactly this scenario that I never used, and in fact, I had to go change that money to new bills because they became outdated. It's the same for my spare change; all the coins I accumulated over the years are now invalid. This could…

Are you suggesting that demonetization of existing coins and notes is a more common occurrence than internet outages?

Yes, I've lived through (and seen in other countries) far more cases of demonetization (USA is a general exception in this regard) than prolonged large-scale (city-wide or larger) internet outages, which pretty much never happen - they're even more rare than prolonged large-scale electricity outages.

In all kinds of countries the chance of demonetization is something like 5% per year i.e. on average every couple decades you have some sort of currency reform where everyone will have some issues with cash, I've lived through three such occurrences myself; and if you don't live in a place with really shitty infrastructure then the risk of your area (as opposed to some rural place where breakdowns affect a tiny number of people) having a total internet breakdown that's not resolved quickly is much lower than 5% per year.

Re: Sweden’s Push to Get Rid of Cash Has Some Saying, ‘Not So Fast’

#70

Post by lizknope »

toxik wrote: post #55
toxik wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suggesting, I am stating as fact.

Sad that instead of having a discussion about this, my point of view gets downvoted. It's true. Where I live, cash has had more downtime than cards. That is just plain fact.

Okay, let's have a discussion. I said that I have never worried about this but my relatives in India did and I provided a link.

Provide some links or describe what happened and then we can have a discussion.

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