71–80 of 100 posts
What happens when the electricity supply is non-existent for weeks or even months? What happened in Puerto Rico and in New Orleans? No electricity = no money.
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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.
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Definitely a concern, but some of the payment methods are independent. Most payments in Sweden are done by card. If that system is down, it should not affect Swish, which is the second most popular way of making payments. A larger Internet outage is a concerning scenario though.
It's been a while since I lived in Sweden, but does Swish not tie to a credit card? If so, it would be no more able to process payments than credit cards, as the payment processor is still involved. It will only work if it uses direct bank transfers, in which case an outage at your bank or in clearing houses (which is no less likely than an outage at a large payment provider) would take out both debit cards, Swish, a…
Cash is a major innovation in evolution of societies and not for some weak-minded progress-cosplaying idiots to abolish it in order to be popular an re-elected.
Let them visit some overpopulated asian country to see why cash is absolutely essential.
Also look no farther than bitcoin - anything which disrupts or even increase transaction time will be a disaster.
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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.
I would be willing to bet that once a country goes cash-free that a second underground hard currency of some type will develop. Being able to barter/exchange without being tracked, or without being in the "system" has too many upsides for it not to exist. Maybe bottle caps? :-)
Teeth work great.
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…
But if the bank locks me out of my account I also can't get cash, even if I could buy stuff with it.
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…
I for once love Swedish cashless society and have rarely been inconvenienced by it. People close to me have had issues due to not having a personnummer (thanks Migrationsverket). But then there are things like Revolut for example or Transferwise. This is how we got around it. Although for stuff like rent you're fresh out of luck if it's not second hand. And the fees for foreigners are for converting currency. Those y…
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…
In addition, handling cash in foreign countries is a huge hassle bebause you oftwn spend quite a lot so then you feel like a moving target for robbers. I never felt more unsafe than when I was with Colombia with 1000$ in cash to pay a big transaction. I had cash in sweden only once in my life and it got stolen in a commuter train. Never again!
The problem with Sweden and SSN is not really cash but everything else (privacy, accessibility, discrimination, administrative hassle, online accounts...).
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 :)