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Swedes turn against cashlessness

theguardian.com

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Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#191

Post by Milner08 »

rgbrenner wrote: post #142
ciocan42 wrote: post #20

From what I've seen here in London (UK), mostly tourists use cash. Everybody else uses contactless payments. You can pay with contactless cards or apple/android pay on the public transport or on your corner grocery store. And with the new fin-tech banks like Monzo, Starling or Revolut the banking apps are light years ahead of traditional banks.

This is one of those things people who pay cashless think (including me, although Im not in the UK) because no one pays attention to how other people pay for things. As of July 2017, 42.3% of transactions used cash in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/12/cash-contactle... The US has a similarly high percentage also.

I think it depends where you are. In London cashless is much easier than in the country where cash & minimum spend on card is much more common

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#192

Post by skrause »

dalbasal wrote: post #173

Good. The cashless drive gives me the creeps. 1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending. 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). 3 - Government control is creepy too. Liberty reasons, privacy reasons, single-point-of failure reasons. Just simple competency reasons. 4 - It advantages big…

> 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for).

Not in the European Union where this fee is capped to 0,3%.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#193

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

StavrosK wrote: post #177
robotmay wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was quite an early user of Revolut and I do feel like they're gradually ruining their service at the moment. I would actually say that my bank (NatWest) has a better mobile experience than them right now. Revolut seem to spend all their time coming up with new marketing schemes to shill cheap partnership products, like phone insurance or health insurance, rather than improving their core product. Their interface se…

That's exactly why I moved to N26 as well. I referred a bunch of people to Revolut early on as well, but their service feels pretty scammy now.

Oh, yeah, the "bank" that is so hip they don't even need the terrible security other incompetent banks have to offer? That sounds like a very good idea!

https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7969-shut_up_and_take_my_money

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#194

Post by einhverfr »

imartin2k wrote: post #153

I live in Sweden. No one I know uses cash. I haven't had the need for nor used cash for years. Even if headlines often are overblown, this feels particularly misleading, as it implies that there would be some bigger trend. Considering that many people only read headlines, I'd support a movement for becoming more accurate even with headlines. "In Sweden, some worry about the cashless society" would be way more apt.

I just moved from Sweden. I used cash frequently, but not in large quantities. Cashlessness is helpful in some cases, but a burden in others.

It is true you can get by without cash in Sweden but you cannot get by without a card, reasonably. But many of the corner markets have minimum payments by card, and so often having smallish money in cash is a very good thing. Additionally the farmer markets in the town squares are still mostly cash-based.

So I never found cashlessness to work entirely while I was there, whether I was in Malmo, Helsingborg, or Landskrona. Maybe in Stockholm it is different, and maybe it is different if you rarely buy at the farmer markets....

Germany, where I now live is the opposite. You can get by without a card, but you cannot get by without cash....

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#195

Post by madcaptenor »

ciocan42 wrote: post #20

From what I've seen here in London (UK), mostly tourists use cash. Everybody else uses contactless payments. You can pay with contactless cards or apple/android pay on the public transport or on your corner grocery store. And with the new fin-tech banks like Monzo, Starling or Revolut the banking apps are light years ahead of traditional banks.

That's because as a tourist, especially an international tourist, you're not hooked up into the local network that people use.

I'm reminded of the last night I spent on a trip to Budapest. First I went to a food truck and they would only take cash, and I was out of forints. Then I went to a bar and they would only let me pay with some app that apparently everyone in Hungary has, but I didn't, and I also didn't have a local data plan so I couldn't get it. I said to my wife that I just wanted to pay with present money (credit card), as opposed to past money (cash) or future money (app).

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#196

Post by mrmekon »

imartin2k wrote: post #179
mrmekon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second sentence corrects the sensational headline: "the small but growing number of Swedes anxious about their country’s rush to embrace a cash-free society." It must be very small. The only person I've ever heard complain about it is... myself. Not for the reasons this article gives, though. I'm more upset about Visa and Mastercard skimming 1% of profit off of the entire country's retail commerce. Maybe if they…

I see your point, but I have a slight correction: The EU has regulated the interchange fee, which is since then capped at "0.2% of the transaction value for Visa and Mastercard consumer debit cards" and "0.3% of the transaction value for Visa and Mastercard consumer credit cards." ( https://www.adyen.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-eu... ) However, I am not a payment expert, so there might be an additional fe…

Well, true, that's somewhat better. But it's the principle of a privately-owned monopoly or oligopoly skimming profits off of a nation's economy that bothers me, not the absolute amount.

As the other response to my comment said, cash itself has an overhead cost, too. But that cost is paid to our government at break-even cost, instead of to a private company for profit.

If Visa and Mastercard had plenty of competition, it wouldn't be so bad. Swish is nice to have, despite its problems. Maybe we'll get there.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#197

Post by SllX »

optimusrex wrote: post #5
jmnicolas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you're not used to pay with cash but for people that are used to it, it's not slower than using plastic. And sometimes it's even faster, when the card or the card reader don't work, the customer is old etc.

With the new addition of Pay Wave where you can simply tap a card on a sensor, I do not see how paying with cash and then waiting for the teller to sort of the bills and provide the right change can be faster. I understand I need to become more accustomed to the culture that I immigrate too, but that does not mean that there are not more efficient solutions compared to "the way its always been". As for the card reade…

A good cashier can process cash sometimes quicker than even the fastest card readers I've seen, and not all card readers are nearly that fast. A lot of them are slow, painfully so. If you have to sign, that's also slow, another step in the transaction.

What it works out to be is that sometimes it's better to use card and sometimes it is better to use cash if speed is a factor. Someone that takes too long because they are fumbling for cash are just as likely to be the type of person that would have to fumble around for their card or have other issues operating the terminal.

Cash is quick and painless with only the most minimal amount of mental arithmetic necessary to give someone their change, not that your typical register won't spit it back out at you anyway.

If it is a sit down restaurant with table service though, there's no real positives or negatives to using either besides whatever is most convenient for you.

So all in all, all I see in any push to go cashless is the illusion of progress. It's all theater and it is strictly speaking, completely unnecessary to go cashless with considerable downsides if society is forced to.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#198

Post by Rondom »

StavrosK wrote: post #53
icebraining wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to enter the amount the person is actually delivering... If the total is 18.45€, I'll probably be paying with a 20€, which the cashier has to input. Now that I think of it, I guess not all POSs require that (the cashier does the calculation for the change in their head), but in my experience they aren't common.

Oh, what people do over here is "count up" to the amount. So if you give them 20€ for 18.45€, they go "5 cents to 18.50, 50 to 19, 1 euro and that's 20, here you go". That's a pretty fast method.

Furthermore, a good cashier will already pick 1,55€ while the customer is paying and put it back is the customer is paying with a more fitting amount.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#199

Post by dang »

rahikainen wrote: post #125
xtrapolate wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "No comments on how crazy this viewpoint is?" Lucky you're here! > "The state is anti-innovation" Not in Sweden, it isn't. Ad hominem all the way. > "They're arguing that a monopoly of the state is better than a "monopoly" of four different companies" There are examples in recent history that support this model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Israel_bank_stock_crisis

"Not in Sweden, it isn't. Ad hominem all the way." Maybe innovative in importing rapists and terrorists. Yeah job well done.

Nationalistic flamewars aren't allowed here. Please don't post like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#200

Post by dang »

Redklao wrote: post #146
rahikainen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not in Sweden, it isn't. Ad hominem all the way." Maybe innovative in importing rapists and terrorists. Yeah job well done.

You mean your fellow Finns that are the largest group of immigrants and that have been overrepresented in crime statistics?

Please don't respond to a comment that breaks the site guidelines by breaking them yourself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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