Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Swedes turn against cashlessness

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 357 posts

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#301

Post by Redklao »

rahikainen wrote: post #172
Redklao wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh wow. Tried to figure that out from my username? Nice. Except I'm actually from Turkey, but I've been living 15 years in Finland. Good try though. In almost every single case the foreigners are more likely to commit crimes in a country than the native population. This is completely natural due to cultural differences and being unaware of some special laws etc. Also Swedes are significantly overrepresented in Finnis…

The Finns were overrepresented in Swedish prisons for decades. They weren't there for parking tickets.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#302

Post by [deleted] »

arghwhat wrote: post #263
powvans wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bitcoin failure (I think it is) teaches something. People don't really give each other money. It's kind of illegal. Money is supposed to move between people and companies or companies and companies, not between people. There is no demand for Peter-pays-Paul. That last bit, that's a profound observation. There is some real demand, but not much. More so there is theoretical demand. In theory I want the option to pa…

As mentioned elsewhere, "Peter-pays-Paul" is huge in Scandinavia. MobilePay, a person-to-person payment app in Denmark, is a huge deal here. It had 3 million users in 2016 (out of 7 million people!), and its second-priority shop payment feature (that arrived much later) is challenging credit cards. It's used for everything from selling used goods to splitting bills. Swish, the Swedish equivalent, has 4 million users.…

[deleted]

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#303

Post by dalbasal »

skrause wrote: post #215
reaperducer wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it's free in the EU, then you'll have a point. Until then you're not addressing his argument.

I wasn't addressing his argument because I actually agree. I was just pointing out that the 2% is far off in Europe.

OP... I was simplifying.

I don't know the real number for the economy as a whole, but the experience I do have (mostly in the higher risk/cost "card-not-present" scenarios) actual transaction costs are always higher than they seem at first glance.

For example, retailers bear the majority of fraud risk. Add that in, and the cost of anti-fraud.. it adds up. Then there's the consumer side, where users "pay" fees, pay interest rates..

My point is that all these digital payment (including the paper-originally CCs) tend to become bottlenecks and oligopolies. Banks, CCs, gateways.. all tend to centralisation, regulation and low competition. All the ingredients for price inflation.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#304

Post by jacobush »

mioelnir wrote: post #261
jacobush wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes... I wonder how Nature implemented that...

By dropping transmutative alchemy from the sprint, allowing the implementation of a capability system on top of a now unforgeable subset of existing resources...

Thank you so much. I'm on the verge of framing this and putting it on the wall. Cubicle wall, but still.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#305

Post by dalbasal »

mindslight wrote: post #189
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…

I agree with the entirety of your comment, except for your specific points 1 and 2. Post facto, having spent cash gives you less insight into what it was spent on (unless you want to diligently duplicate the recording of a credit card with your own private ledger). And it's often cited that businesses accepting cash have real costs for doing so, which I tend to believe (armored cars, etc).

My point 1 was about me. I like using cash.

Point 2 is.. I think your reasoning about cash costs relates to point 4. These kinds of costs are something that big, high turnover businesses are concerned with. I don't think a tiny, rural cafe cares too much that €190 of its €780 daily take is cash.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#307

Post by lotsofpulp »

deaddodo wrote: post #241
Symbiote wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. The United States has this via Venmo. But Venmo doesn't replace business transactions, only personal ones.

The US equivalent would be Zelle, that is person to person. Venmo is person to Venmo to person.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#308

Post by henrikschroder »

greggarious wrote: post #292
henrikschroder wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best feature of cash is that it allows you to make anonymous purchases, and to make illegal purchases. "But I have nothing to hide! I don't want to buy illegal stuff!" Not right now, maybe. But who decides what's illegal and what's not? A cashless society is one more step towards turn-key fascism, which is why it has to be opposed. Also worth noting is that the chairman of the central bank of Sweden basically tol…

You can have valid reasons to want to hide legal purchases. Alcohol is a legal drug, but how will you feel when your credit card company sells your purchase history to some analytics firm that deems you high risk for health issues, sells that data to your insurer, and your rates go up? When I go to a bar or a McDonalds I pay cash for this reason.

It's kinda weird that we somehow have to argue for privacy and make up reasons for our purchase history to be private.

No. The default is that what I spend my money on is no one else's god damn business. It doesn't matter if I spend it on puppies and charity and unicorn dolls, or if I spend it on dildos and drugs and hookers.

And it's incredibly important for society to progress, that everyone can choose to spend their money on things that are illegal, things that are unethical, things that are on the edges, things that are subversive, because economic activity is the best indicator we have of what society values.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#309

Post by Tijdreiziger »

1001101 wrote: post #161
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ECB interest rates have already been negative since 2014. I'm pretty sure that if there was no risk of a bank run, banks would follow by also setting their interest rates to be negative.

ECB also banned 500 euro notes, which may also be another leading indicator. Sweden's housing market is in a downturn right now. If it starts looking like the early 90s, deeper negative rates might seem attractive (they are currently at -0.5% in SE).

Ah, I didn't know that there are already banks with negative interest rates. I'm surprised Swedes haven't started keeping sums of cash in their homes.

In the Netherlands, they had been going down until the +0.05% mark, where they have now stayed for some time.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#310

Post by mcv »

sitharus wrote: post #185
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…

Cashless transactions don’t have to go through the card networks. Here in New Zealand around 2/3rds of all retail transactions are done via cards because many years ago the reserve bank mandated free inter-bank transactions. This means direct bank-to-bank transactions via the local EFTPOS network are free for both parties (with exceptions for some low-use plans, and businesses typically rent the terminals). Also the…

There are only 4 things that I still pay with cash: my cleaner, my cheese shop (who refuses to get a pin machine, the luddite), my son's allowance, and money for street performers and beggars.

The only thing for which I use credit cards are online purchases from foreign websites that don't support iDeal.

Everything else is through regular bank transactions, either through pin card, direct transactions, or iDeal. All Dutch banks support iDeal, and I wish the rest of the world would too because it's vastly superior to credit cards.

Post reply on HN