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Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

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Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#31

Post by sliverstorm »

sveme wrote: post #13

Maybe it is a mild paranoia attack kicking in, but I find the trend to a cashless society very troublesome. I'm doing all I can to avoid being tracked on the web, using AdBlock and Ghostery, among other things, yet the privacy implications of going cashless I'm rarely considering. Cash is anonymous; cards are perfect trackers. Both your tracks and your most intimate preferences on the web and in real life are perfect…

There are privacy implications, but you do get a lot in return. Cards are perfect trackers, and that is why I love mine- with virtually no effort, I have a perfect record of my spending stretching back years. That's very powerful for taking control of my spending & finances.

Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#32

Post by aembleton »

roncohen wrote: post #8

I believe the trend in the nordics is largely driven by the Dankort and similar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dankort ) which is a debit card that is free to get and use for consumers. Merchants pay an annual fee depending on their transaction volume and they are not allowed to pass the cost on to the consumer. It doubles as a VISA which is neat when we go abroad. An interesting data point is that every single taxis…

Does Dankort use nfc/paypass so that you can just tap your card, or do you need to enter a pin each time?

Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#33

Post by tzs »

hga wrote: post #27
sveme wrote: post #13

Maybe it is a mild paranoia attack kicking in, but I find the trend to a cashless society very troublesome. I'm doing all I can to avoid being tracked on the web, using AdBlock and Ghostery, among other things, yet the privacy implications of going cashless I'm rarely considering. Cash is anonymous; cards are perfect trackers. Both your tracks and your most intimate preferences on the web and in real life are perfect…

Agreed. I use cash for everything I can, checks when I can't (local payments), and credit cards only for purchases over the web, where it can't be easily avoided, and one does need, in the US at least, to maintain a credit record. This is primarily to avoid fraud with stolen info, and secondly that mild paranoia we share. If I had a Pocky addiction, no one would know outside my family ^_^.

Why checks for non-cash local payments? They aren't really much better than credit cards for privacy, are they? They also come with some significant risks [1].

[1] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html

Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#34

Post by notatoad »

Kenji wrote: post #14
roncohen wrote: post #8

I believe the trend in the nordics is largely driven by the Dankort and similar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dankort ) which is a debit card that is free to get and use for consumers. Merchants pay an annual fee depending on their transaction volume and they are not allowed to pass the cost on to the consumer. It doubles as a VISA which is neat when we go abroad. An interesting data point is that every single taxis…

"they are not allowed to pass the cost on to the consumer" Haha, that's funny. The merchant's whole income is from the customer, there's no way not to pass it on to the customer, just to conceal better the fact that they're passing it on.

obviously they pass the cost on to the customer, but not directly. they can't charge one price for cash and a different price for card.

Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#35

Post by sliverstorm »

silb wrote: post #25
higherpurpose wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if now the governments there consider people using cash "suspicious", just like the US gov considers not having a Facebook account suspicious, or how the Spanish Court in a recent case considered encrypting your e-mail end to end as "suspicious".

This is true in Norway. Merchants are required by law to report cash purchases over a certain amount to the tax authorities.

The same has been true for cash withdraws from the bank over a certain amount, for decades. "Suspicious" isn't quite the right word, as there are plenty of legitimate reasons. But the cost (reviewing a small number of large withdraws) vs. probability of detection is good.

Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#36

Post by Swizec »

newaccountfool wrote: post #28
Swizec wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I am from (Slovenia) it is completely illegal. In fact it is illegal for businesses to have cash expenses higher than a hundred euro or so. Very low by European standards, but all countries in EU have some sort of cash payment limit. This is specifically to curb shadow economies and the grey market. And the reason it's illegal to pay employees in cash is that the government needs a way of tracking "automatic" s…

In the UK it's not illegal. You can pay them in cash in hand. Most builders and workmen that do work in your homes are paid cash in hand when they come round, this is common. They just need to declare it with the correct authorities themself.

Yes, we do that here too. But you aren't their employee, you are their client.

Important difference.

Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#37

Post by newaccountfool »

newaccountfool wrote: post #28
Swizec wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I am from (Slovenia) it is completely illegal. In fact it is illegal for businesses to have cash expenses higher than a hundred euro or so. Very low by European standards, but all countries in EU have some sort of cash payment limit. This is specifically to curb shadow economies and the grey market. And the reason it's illegal to pay employees in cash is that the government needs a way of tracking "automatic" s…

In the UK it's not illegal. You can pay them in cash in hand. Most builders and workmen that do work in your homes are paid cash in hand when they come round, this is common. They just need to declare it with the correct authorities themself.

Sorry, you can still be paid cash in hand from most employers. Although most wont offer it. Pubs, bars, nightclubs lots of places you can be paid cash in hand. Just a lot of places choose not to do it as it's easier to manager there cash flows.

Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#38

Post by cheald »

Completely aside from the privacy issues, I rather bemoan the decline of cash, for the very simple reason that handling physical currency makes it much harder to spend carelessly.

It's too easy to swipe your card and receive an item. It's a lot harder to fork over $483.71 in tangible, handle-able dollars. After my wife and I analyzed our spending habits, we found that we were bleeding money specifically because of the tremendous number of small - $5 here, $10 there - transactions. These completely fly under your mental radar when you're paying with a card.

We've since switched to a cash budget, where we withdraw the money we need for the next two weeks for various things (groceries, hobbies, entertainment) and spend exclusively out of that. If we're out and about and want something and don't have the cash on us, we don't buy it. When I open up my wallet and see that I only have $X left of the grocery budget, I consider whether I really need that thing I just put into my cart. Internet purchases still get made on a card, but we "pay" for them with cash from the budget into a pool that we withdraw from the next period to refull the budget. We've become much more sensitive to sales, discounts, and smart shopping - and all because we have the continual feedback loop of physical cash. Our monthly margin has substantially improved as a direct result, and we've been able to make substantial progress on all our unsecured debt - we should be free of it this year. There's more to it than just cash, but it's really about being aware what you're spending and finding ways to make sure you only spend what you have; cashless transactions practically encourage you to be unaware of what you have and what you can afford.

For a society that is utterly crippled by debt, and in a culture that is practically begging us to spend money every time we turn around, it seems like the last thing we need is to go cashless. It's convenient, it's easy, it's fast...and that's a problem.

I'm not saying that cashless payment methods are bad. I love them. Paying for things on my phone Google Wallet is magical. Amazon has completely transformed how I buy stuff. There are lots of really great things about cashless economies, but for anyone that is less than perfectly disciplined, it's a very sharp two-edged sword.

Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#39

Post by newaccountfool »

gst wrote: post #21
newaccountfool wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to pay for a Debit Card? What's the reason for this?

You pay for debit and credit cards in most European countries. One reason is probably that the fees paid by the merchants for card processing are much lower than in the US. So while a bank in the US is happy to give you a free credit card in the US, because it knows that it gets the money back via the fees paid from the merchants, a bank in Europe won't be able to break even with that approach.

I'm from the UK and have never had to pay anything for opening up an account and using a debit card.

Re: Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

#40

Post by Swizec »

tzs wrote: post #33
hga wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I use cash for everything I can, checks when I can't (local payments), and credit cards only for purchases over the web, where it can't be easily avoided, and one does need, in the US at least, to maintain a credit record. This is primarily to avoid fraud with stolen info, and secondly that mild paranoia we share. If I had a Pocky addiction, no one would know outside my family ^_^.

Why checks for non-cash local payments? They aren't really much better than credit cards for privacy, are they? They also come with some significant risks [1]. [1] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html

They are also virtually nonexistent in Europe.

From Wikipedia: "In most European countries, cheques are now rarely used, even for third party payments. In these countries, it is standard practice for businesses to publish their bank details on invoices, to facilitate the receipt of payments by giro."

"In Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Scandinavia, cheques have almost completely vanished in favour of direct bank transfers and electronic payments. "

"In Finland, banks stopped issuing personal cheques in about 1993 in favour of giro systems, which are now almost exclusively electronically initiated either via internet banking or payment machines located at banks and shopping malls."

"In Poland cheques were withdrawn from use in 2006"

"Since 2001, businesses in the United Kingdom have made more electronic payments than cheque payments."

The story seems to be similar in Asia and Oceania. According to the Wikipedia article on cheques, North America is pretty much the only place where they are still taken seriously.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque#Modern_era

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