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Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

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Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#241

Post by avaika »

bouncycastle wrote: post #151
CPLX wrote: post #14

A society without cash is a society in which every person has no choice but to get the permission of someone they don’t know and will never meet each and every time they seek to obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation, and that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time.

Want to share about my experience about the "permission" part. I once travelled to Beijing and had dinner in a fancy dumpling restaurant. When I went to pay the bill, my European bank instantly flagged the transaction and blocked my card from further use. I had no idea what happened until I called the bank later that evening (had to wait until they opened). So yeah, what you said happened to me - revoked instantly, s…

That's why I travel with at least 2 cards from different banks. Fortunately in my country there are plenty of banks with free service for debit cards.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#242

Post by antt »

AnabeeKnox wrote: post #145
kartan wrote: post #43

> Swedish legislation makes it possible for retailers, restaurants and other companies to refuse to accept cash, for instance by putting up a sign at the entrance or by the till. Yes. It started as a curiosity and now this signs are everywhere. > By connecting a bank account in any bank with a mobile phone number, Swish has become a popular way to share a restaurant bill Yes. And to gather money for a friend's birthd…

"The oldest part of the population have a hard time adapting to this situation" Also immigrants, non-Swedes and vulnerable people in society have a hard time. But the white people find the cashless society works well for them I suppose.

Stop it with your Anglo-centric cultural imperialism. Not every place is built up on top of genocide and colonialism.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#243

Post by felipemnoa »

dmitriy_ko wrote: post #219
kristofferR wrote: post #97

I'm a Norwegian who went to a Swedish music festival last summer. I couldn't pay for a lot of things there, since the booths only accepted Swish (the only relevant Swedish mobile payment solution, it's a de facto monopoly). I couldn't sign up and use Swish on my phone, since it only accepts Swedish bank accounts. I couldn't borrow money from my Swedish friends either, since they didn't have cash (and it mostly wasn't…

That reminds me of Futurama episode where Bender finds a phone booth: "Now I don't need to carry my phone with me all the time!" Progress is sometimes a regress in disguise.

I've noticed this with mature technology. There comes a point where a product is perfect, no need to add anymore features. But the manufacturer still wants to continue adding new features so that they can use those as new selling points. Unfortunately the new features end up making the product worse.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#245

Post by flurdy »

The propriety solutions and its near monopoly in both Sweden & Norway (and perhaps other countries) are also due to the slow expansion and adoption of Apple Pay and Google/Android Pay into those countries.

Apple Pay was only launched in Norway earlier this year and Google Pay only a few weeks ago. So the propriety solutions have had a lot of time to establish their monopoly.

Also, Apple/Google pay uses the Visa/Mastercard/Amex networks whilst 8 out of 10 of all card transactions in Norway is via BankAxept. BankAxept payments are near instant and has a very low transaction fee. A flat fee of 24 øre (0.03 USD) which most of the time a lot less than Visa/Mastercard that charge 1-2%.

You will find a lot of independent merchants in Norway, e.g. corner shops that won't accept Visa & Mastercard, but only accept BankAxept. This is also why Apple Pay only works in a few places, compared to the UK where I live where Apple Pay is accepted nearly everywhere.

[1] https://www.norgedaily.com/google-pay-launched-norway/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankAxept

[3] https://no.mobiletransaction.org/bankaxept/

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#246

Post by protomyth »

gammateam wrote: post #209
mmirate wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted, but even broken clocks are right twice a day. Just because someone wrote a pre-scientific text which, today, supports antiauthoritarianism ... does not mean that antiauthoritarianism lacks its many other merits. Those people are right to fear national ID and cashlessness; their fear being from Revelations, doesn't necessarily make them religious nutjobs (of the sort whose fears we regularly and usefully igno…

For an example without religious polarization, you can look at Nostradamus' ramblings They are completely useless until misattributed in hindsight, until further reattributed in hindsight to something slightly more coincidentally relevant. 500 years of this so far.

Truthfully, my original point was that this was a worry of people before technology made it quite a bit easier to govern. I am unaware of any Nostradamus that talks about restrictions of commerce, nor am I talking about the nature of prophecy of Revelations other than restrictions on commerce seemed to be important enough in the ancient mind to specifically call out.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#247

Post by sparkie »

Casseres wrote: post #126
StavrosK wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't necessarily need a connection. It can work just as well with a QR code signature that the recipient uses later to broadcast the transaction.

Without the network, another recipient wouldn't know about that transaction and thus be susceptible to a double-spend, right?

You can receive incoming blocks on the Bitcoin network via satellite, radio etc. I doubt a government would be able to keep up the whack-a-mole game against many activists who can set up mobile block relays.

You can also send transactions over any communication, even SMS. A good example from Andreas Antonopoulos is that emoticons are a 128 character set, so you could send a 250 byte bitcoin transaction as a sequence of 15 emoticons.

Good luck stopping that.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#248

Post by avaika »

ploggingdev wrote: post #60

No mention about the privacy implications of having every transaction tracked? We're already at a point where pretty much every transaction is tracked and a cashless society makes being tracked a requirement to function in society. Is privacy even a topic of discussion with governments looking to go cashless? I still try and pay with cash wherever possible, but many offline/physical stores often require a phone numbe…

Good point. There is a rumor among my local IT fellows, that some banks who also run an insurance companies (or partner with some) share transaction information with insurance guys to help them identify whether discount is possible for a specific person or not. E.g. if someone frequently spends a lot of money in pubs, most likely that someone will have health issues sooner or later. So better to increase the insurance fee.

For sure such information trading is illegal, but as the government doesn't give a single care, most likely it is true.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#249

Post by isodude »

kristofferR wrote: post #97

I'm a Norwegian who went to a Swedish music festival last summer. I couldn't pay for a lot of things there, since the booths only accepted Swish (the only relevant Swedish mobile payment solution, it's a de facto monopoly). I couldn't sign up and use Swish on my phone, since it only accepts Swedish bank accounts. I couldn't borrow money from my Swedish friends either, since they didn't have cash (and it mostly wasn't…

There will always be other solutions at hand, these guys are doing something about it: https://www.revolut.com

Same as swish but no need for Swedish banks nor BankID.

I use Swish extensively because it works for giving kids cash remote and at the same time buying a car. If I would stumple on someone who is unable to use it it would be troublesome, but I think most swedes would break their neck to solve it anyhow in that case. If they know they have the possibility.

Bank transactions between countries have always been a burden, I so hope that we will see big change in the near future.

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