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Swedes turn against cashlessness

theguardian.com

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Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#231

Post by jamesblonde »

Symbiote wrote: post #230
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…

1. Can your cash do this? [1] A breakdown of spending by my internet bank, by category. 4. In Sweden, and some other European countries (and China?) a lemonade stand works by person-to-person bank transfers, initiated using a mobile phone app. The Swedish one is called Swish, but I link to the Danish one [2] as they have an English explanation. People really do use these apps for things like lemonade stands. I've see…

We have a verb in swedish for this: "I'll swish you 50 crowns" "Can you swish me 200?"

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#232

Post by jamesblonde »

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.

Totally agree with this. Most people just dont carry cash. The big trend is shops not accepting cash. My mother-in-law tried to pay for a round at a bar for me today - "sorry, no cash" (O'Leary's Kista).

The trend is most definitely towards cashless, not away from it.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#233

Post by softawre »

sridca wrote: post #224
cantrevealname wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, I like the finality of a cash transaction. For anything other than cash, I have to keep records in case something goes wrong. Example: A hotel might double-bill my credit card, and this has actually happened twice to me. If you pay cash, it's impossible to be double billed at some future point. Perhaps you still want a receipt, but you never need to check it against statements. The finality of cash avoid…

There was a hotel in Brooklyn which required that I provide them a credit card for security deposit. Or was it not the norm?

Almost all hotels do this.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#234

Post by Symbiote »

imartin2k wrote: post #229
mrmekon wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah I tried to find the rates that Swish charges to businesses but didn't find them (although didn't look to thoroughly either). But can it really be even below the 0,2% of cap for debit cards?

The rates for Danish MobilePay were easy to find [1], and are flat, under 30-75 ears [2] depending on volume. I'd guess that's around 0.5-1%, but I don't have much idea.

[1] https://mobilepay.dk/da-dk/erhverv/Pages/mobilepay-myshop.as...

[2] Well, I say "crowns" in English

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#235

Post by skookumchuck »

The trouble with cashless is when someone in power decides they don't like you, they can just turn it off for you.

I've had accounts and credit cards frozen before. It's pretty alarming when you're traveling, for example. With cashless, what are you going to do?

It's like getting stuck on the "no-fly" list, but infinitely worse.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#236

Post by aianus »

stale2002 wrote: post #109
aianus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we psychologically manipulate people into spending more than they’re naturally comfortable with, we’re creating a society that’s worse off for the people in it. If the average person didn't spend too much money on things they don't need, we'd have very high unemployment. The people with jobs might feel better and less stressed but a huge number of people would be extremely stressed and despondent.

Wrong. Even people like Keynes didnt believe that. Resources that are wasted on stuff that we don't need is directly taken from other better places that those resources could have been spent on. By not spending now, we are instead able to spend those resources on the future.

> Resources that are wasted on stuff that we don't need is directly taken from other better places that those resources could have been spent on.

The vast majority of people have skills and are employed in areas other than housing, food, transportation, healthcare, clothing, and education. What would they all do in a world where nobody bought massages or luxury vehicles or hair dye or designer clothes or airplanes or tasting menus?

Would you have all the artists and marketers retrain as farmers and green energy researchers? Would people really be happier in this hypothetical ultra-efficient future of such limited career choices?

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#237

Post by Symbiote »

nugator wrote: post #184
mistermann wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People must still use cash to buy drugs, sex, and that sort of thing no?

Swede here. My guess is that it's mostly cash but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the transactions goes through the very popular big banks-backed mobilenumber-addressed instantaneous app-based no-fee bank account-to-bank account transaction system Swish.

I don't know about Sweden, but in Copenhagen the only times I've seen a queue at a cash machine is the one nearest Christiania, i.e. where cannabis (and more) is sold.

I'd be very surprised if a drug dealer accepted Swish/Mobilepay.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#238

Post by koolba »

Symbiote wrote: post #230
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…

1. Can your cash do this? [1] A breakdown of spending by my internet bank, by category. 4. In Sweden, and some other European countries (and China?) a lemonade stand works by person-to-person bank transfers, initiated using a mobile phone app. The Swedish one is called Swish, but I link to the Danish one [2] as they have an English explanation. People really do use these apps for things like lemonade stands. I've see…

> [1] http://i.imgur.com/Smkim6Vr.png

Is this month's data an outlier or do you really spend $1000/month on fast food?!

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#239

Post by Symbiote »

Milner08 wrote: post #191
rgbrenner wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was still caught out at new year, when a Chinese takeaway near Barbican wanted cash for a £4.50 sale.

I'm used to paying for that type of transaction with a card in Denmark.

(I paid partly in Danish coins, since I didn't have enough sterling and the cashier liked the resemblance to old Chinese coins with a hole in the middle.)

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#240

Post by stronglikedan »

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…

5 - I can discretely "upgrade" my service level with particular individuals.
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