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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

#251

Post by mort96 »

gammateam wrote: post #215
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.

If only there was some sort of peer-to-peer version of electronic cash that would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

If only there was some sort of peer-to-peer version of electronic cash that would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution, yet had some recourse for fraudulent transactions, didn't require downloading hundreds of gigabytes of blockchain, processed more than a handful of transactions globally per ten minutes, and where you didn't lose all your money if you accidentally deleted the wrong file or your hard drive broke or got lost.

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

#252

Post by coldtea »

yellow_postit wrote: post #150
dingaling wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Utopia my ass It actually IS a Utopia, by Thomas More's original definition; a society that appears idyllic and perfectly organised on the surface, but is only maintained in that state by everyone doing what they're supposed to do. And that is achieved by enforcing total compliance through surveillance and coercion. The point of the book is that the reader really wouldn't want to live in Utopia once he understands…

I fail to see how Sweden in this case is enforcing the cashless trends through surveillance or coercion.

Lots of oppressive regimes and policies throughout 20th century had large popular support too, and people opted-in to them.

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

#253

Post by Latteland »

gambiting wrote: post #212
AnabeeKnox wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

>>But the white people find the cashless society works well for them I suppose That's an extremely odd comment to make. What does being white have anything to do with this? There's loads of white immigrants in Sweden, they suffer from this exactly the same as everyone else.

The comment is probably sarcastically referring to white privilege. So the wealthy people who this works for (have money, a bank account, aren't living on the street, not a visitor or an immigrant) in Sweden are the equivalent of 'white privileged people' in the us, even though I don't think of Sweden as a racist state (but I don't know much about that there).

To explain a little more, in the US, you are far less likely to be charged with a crime, shot, etc if you are a white person vs a black person in the same situation. This is highly controversial, with many people denying it and wanting to argue against this idea, but the easy evidence is like this: Did you ever get stopped in a car by the cops and asked get out while they frisked you, looked for trouble, etc? Never happened to me in half a century of life, but it's happened to even a black us senator multiple times.

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

#254

Post by AnssiH »

dao- wrote: post #204
kristofferR wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that too, but my bank (Sbanken, normally a good user friendly bank) wouldn't let the payment go through without all the fields filled out.

IBAN == bank account number with the bank info baked in, although I think for foreign transfers you might still have to provide the bank code separately. I've never been asked for an address when doing a wire transfer. From what I've heard banks stopped validating the name field a long time ago and you can enter whatever you want.

My Finnish bank has always (10+ years) asked for the full recipient address when I've entered a foreign IBAN (even within EU). Just tested that it still does.

I don't think they validate it, though, IIRC I've gotten away with simply putting in "Germany".

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

#255

Post by isodude »

corodra wrote: post #100

I can’t find the article, but didn’t another Nordic country, where they’re going cashless already find a flaw? Their communication infrastructure had some sort of disruption, I don’t think it was an attack, but a failure of something for like half a day. Because of that, merchant services were screwed. Few people could buy anything since few carried cash. Don’t get me wrong, I barely carry cash on me. I just have a b…

This has happened with Swish a couple of times.

It's no different than a VISA or MasterCard debit though.

It's a good case for e-krona which I'm looking forward too.

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

#256

Post by Latteland »

berdario wrote: post #136
solarwind wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a Canadian citizen who ever used a credit/debit card at a cannabis dispensary (or if you even just invested or worked for a Canadian dispensary), you are now permanently barred from entering the United States. A cashless society is a totalitarian society.

Is this for real? How would the the DHS or another US entity know about payment transactions made on a canadian bank account? And, I realize that cannabis is not legal at the federal level in the US, but how would lawfully purchasing a cannabis product years ago disqualify you from entering the US?

It's for real and the idiotic border police in the us have started asking people about it. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/smoke-pot-us-border-1.47185...

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

#258

Post by sethhochberg »

dorfsmay wrote: post #207
mason55 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a big club in NYC that does this (Brooklyn Mirage), except they link your credit card to the bracelet and you don’t have to load credit. Makes the lines for drinks move so fast, it’s really outstanding.

Do you have a pin or something to verify the payment? Would a stolen bracelet be useable? How do they deal with tips?

You create a pin when you activate your card/wristband after walking in, yeah.

At the Mirage, tips work just like a credit card transaction would - the bartender has an iPad sitting in front of them and you choose preset options or enter a custom one.

Typically you place your order with the bartender, they'll ring it all up on the terminal, and by the time you've finished tapping your wristband on the reader and choosing a tip amount the bartender is done making your drinks. No hassle with pens and receipts and handing cards around or any of that.

Out of all the festivals, etc, I've been to where they do wristband-based payment instead of accepting cards directly, Avant Gardner / Brooklyn Mirage have the best setup IMO.

Apparently Billfold is the vendor: https://www.billfoldpos.com/

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

#259

Post by patrickmcnamara »

gambiting wrote: post #208
masklinn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It removes the entire second paragraph. It takes about 5mn to do a SEPA bank transfer: open banking client, open transfers, create new transfer, enter destination IBAN, enter amount, optionally set a data & some text, confirm.

And then you wait 3 days for the money to actually arrive. I frequently send money between EU countries and the speed of transaction is abysmal unless you want to transfer to be denominated in Euro which means that if you're sending money between two non-euro currencies you're losing money twice.

SEPA is for euro-denominated bank accounts. That's what the E is.

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

#260

Post by paulie_a »

yholio wrote: post #233
bamboozled wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best payment experience I’ve had is cash. I pay for what I need and when I leave the festival I can still use my “credits” hassle free anywhere I like.

The trouble with cash is that you cannot really control high-school dropouts to charge $10 for a $2 beer without skimming a bit on the side. Hence this whole "here's some fake money that only works here" BS.

Just do an incorrect inventory. Some venues let workers do inventory and reporting. They are charging for the cup itself and that is how they determine sales. If a stack of cups disappears, there is no reconciliation.

Music venues have some interesting procedures, Alpine valley allows under an oz of weed to be brought in. They have college girls carrying backpacks with 40k in cash. There is an off duty cop directly behind though.

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