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Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

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Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#171

Post by pb82 »

beefield wrote: post #146
johnlorentzson wrote: post #107

I'm Swedish and this stuff makes me really worried. Especially since the main way for two people to exchange small amounts of money is through a proprietary app that uses a proprietary ID system (owned by a for-profit company) that only runs on iOS, Android, Windows and Mac. I really hope this trend dies off, a cash-less society is a terrible idea. I will say, however, that buses not taking cash is perfectly fine. Th…

> I really hope this trend dies off, a cash-less society is a terrible idea. I fully understand that my opinion is both unintuitive and deeply disliked by many if not most people, so I can only ask you to spend some time thinking if you really have thought this through. Anyway, I believe there are realistic scenarios where it is good for the economy and society to have negative interest rates imposed by central banks…

I'm skeptic. Forcing people to buy crap they don't need by denying them ways to store cash will probably increase some numbers in some spreadsheets. But is it really a net positive for society? Or are there other reasons that I didn't consider like more people seeking investment options like the stock market?

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#172

Post by zulln »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #88
tedeh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bank account is a right for every EU citizen: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr... Banks are not allowed to refuse account opening to any resident.

Icelandic banks make 2FA mandatory, and your only 2FA choice is phone SMS. So now there is a ~1000kr/month fee for using the bank here, with a ~8000kr startup cost, because you need a phone and a sim card.

1000kr/month = $7,93/€7,00

8000kr = $63,40/€55,97

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#173

Post by tyfon »

johnlorentzson wrote: post #134
dtech wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will always have vendor neutral payments with bank transactions, which are EU wide and regulated with SEPA. Don't know about Sweden, but in the Netherlands that's widely supported and free for consumers. What's the harm in people using a proprietary app on top of that that has slightly more convenience?

Because it's become a standard that almost everyone is expected to use.

We got a system in Norway called Vipps for small transactions that I refuse to take part in but it seems like 99% of the rest of the population are using it.

I've yet to have anyone refuse to pay me via direct bank transfer or me paying them in this way when I ask and explain why I don't use Vipps.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#174

Post by muriithi »

cko wrote: post #99
codr7 wrote: post #66

I recently moved back to Sweden after living 4 years in Germany. I don't have any cards, and I don't carry a "smart"phone anymore; in Germany this didn't cause any trouble at all and I was far from alone. Much of the current Swedish society is currently closed to me, I know of three shops and one cafe in the (200k people) city center that accept cash. Some of it has been gradual but it changed dramatically during the…

I'm quite interested in your setup. You walk around with a feature phone and some bills? Sounds really Zen. I would like to get to that point. How do you navigate without Maps, Uber, etc.? Do your friends know you won't reply to texts? Maybe I'll buy a separate flip phone and leave the smart phone and credit cards at home just in case.

Not sure how Uber works in Sweden but in Kenya you can call a number and give your location and destination and they will send an Uber to you and you can pay the driver in cash.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#175

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

aglavine wrote: post #37
notRobot wrote: post #2

Being able to pay through cards and phones is super convenient, but cash should never not be an option. Card companies, payment apps and banks are constantly tracking your purchases and profiling you. This data can be leaked/stolen/sold, and is always available to governments and those in/with power. Cash is (almost completely) anonymous. You should always be able to pay with cash if you want.

Don't know why an option of both anonymity and cashless isn't possible. Why couldn't a virtual wallet with just a fake name and a password exists?

Pseudonymity is not anonymity. Your legal name is not really the most interesting aspect of your identity.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#176

Post by andrepd »

johnlorentzson wrote: post #107

I'm Swedish and this stuff makes me really worried. Especially since the main way for two people to exchange small amounts of money is through a proprietary app that uses a proprietary ID system (owned by a for-profit company) that only runs on iOS, Android, Windows and Mac. I really hope this trend dies off, a cash-less society is a terrible idea. I will say, however, that buses not taking cash is perfectly fine. Th…

Like many things (social networking, digital AI assistants, keyboard text prediction) they are creepy because they are closed-off and proprietary and you have fuck all idea what's happening with your data, besides vaguely knowing you're being monitored in a way Orwell could only dream of.

Once you take out the fact that e.g. messages you write are being recorded, your speech is being monitored 24/7 by a microphone in your home, or all your text input is being stored in somebody's server halfway across the world, those technologies could have the potential to be really neat indeed.

One can dream.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#177

Post by eitland »

johnlorentzson wrote: post #117
eitland wrote: post #42

In Norway, next to Sweden, accepting cash is mandatory and you can get fined (after a warning it seems) if you don't. The reasoning is we don't want everything to break down just because the power grid or backbone networks breaks down.

Looks like I know where I'm going if Sweden turns to shit.

BTW: I often look at profiles on HN.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#178

Post by rapnie »

Freak_NL wrote: post #158
kzrdude wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are real problems, too. One day Swedbank had an outage on their payment systems for more than 24 hours, and this is a bank that has a significant part of the country as customers (I'm just guessing, but it's above 10% for sure). People couldn't pay for anything, couldn't buy train tickets (all digital). The outage was so big that the train companies had to let commuters go without tickets, so at least those peo…

This is what really irks me here in the Netherlands too. I'm fine with digital payments (e.g., contactless debit cards) for the bulk of transactions, but cash should be guarded as a valid alternative. The past year I've several times been in a store where digital transactions didn't work for one reason or another (telephone line got cut by roadworks, internet modem crashed, etc.). Fine, I'll just pay with cash in the…

That is why I most often still pay in cash. Want to be counted in that statistic. Unfortunately in NL nowadays ATM's are getting scarce. Banks want to drive us towards digital-only payments.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#179

Post by ACS_Solver »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #114
ACS_Solver wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in Sweden for nearly 10 years, and the whole cashless aspect is really something I've embraced. Cashless payments dominated even 10 years ago, but I've also seen a massive change in the past 2-3 years with places no longer accepting cash. Grocery shops still do, but most restaurants, takeout places and cafes are cashless. On the contrary, I find myself irritated in Germany where cash is required. The main…

>I refuse to own any store loyalty cards because they give the store an exact list of what I buy, tied to my identity, which is a much bigger privacy threat. You're engaging in self delusion if you think the almost uniformly cashless payment systems you embrace in Sweden don't already cause this to be the case about you down to the minutest level: with your payments, where you make them, what you buy, when, and a ver…

Unless I'm very wrong about the technical implementation, the data that the bank has is just the store where I shopped (merchant, card terminal) and the amount. They do not have data on what I bought, as in the data that's on the store's receipt. The store, on the other hand, only has the card number and not my name. This is where I see the need for legal protections. The store should not be allowed to keep that receipt info (item breakdown) for more than X days. They should not be allowed to transmit it at all. The bank should likewise not be allowed to engage in any data mining or forward that information anywhere.

As for the broader privacy implication, that is something I would hope a national cryptocurrency addresses. While cash is anonymous, anonymity is not a property exclusive to cash. From my point of view, everything sucks about cash except anonymity - so, by a software analogy, it makes more sense to port anonymity to cashless systems than to maintain a legacy cash system.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#180

Post by 74ls00 »

pb82 wrote: post #171
beefield wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope this trend dies off, a cash-less society is a terrible idea. I fully understand that my opinion is both unintuitive and deeply disliked by many if not most people, so I can only ask you to spend some time thinking if you really have thought this through. Anyway, I believe there are realistic scenarios where it is good for the economy and society to have negative interest rates imposed by central banks…

I'm skeptic. Forcing people to buy crap they don't need by denying them ways to store cash will probably increase some numbers in some spreadsheets. But is it really a net positive for society? Or are there other reasons that I didn't consider like more people seeking investment options like the stock market?

From the long term view, it seems reasonable to assume that the high economic growth rates of the 20th century are not going to be something we’ll see again anytime soon. An environmentally-sustainable economic outlook for the future is likely to see long period of close to 0% growth, and more frequent periods of negative growth. Environmentally-sustainable economics seems like a net positive for society, and at this point, an almost necessity.
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