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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

#341

Post by eftychis »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #326
o-o- wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary cited reason for the cashless trend is the ability for shops to simply say no. Anti-money laundry laws trickle down from EU level.

And the most obvious reason for the cashless trend is that cashless is easier and more fruitful for buyer and seller. Buyer just touches their card/phone to the machine. Who likes dealing with cash? (Answer: Germans)

Also Greeks, Italians and most the Europeans I know. Cashless is a Northern European thing I would say.

Edit: Please comment if things are different in your non-Swedish country (considering Europe here, but curious about other countries of course).

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

#342

Post by clubm8 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #89
thaumasiotes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't pay the mental tax of always ensuring i have dollar bills on me to tip left, right, and center. Is this something you were doing before? If not, why did you bring it up? Who do you imagine is doing this?

When I moved from the bay area to Germany, I suddenly had to actively manage the cash in my wallet and intentionally bring coins -- coins, people! -- with me around town. Felt like taking a step backwards in time, really annoying. If you use the "wrong" bill denominations or don't have the right coins, cashiers can get irked at you too. It's so backwards compared to not having to think about it.

I always found Germans pretty accommodating about breaking notes, though I wasn't trying to spend Bin Ladens ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_euro_note

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

#343

Post by [deleted] »

mason55 wrote: post #180
eksemplar wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s festival payment done wrong, but cashless can be really great at festivals. In Denmark we have a festival called Skanderborg festival, and they build both your ticket and your cashless payment into the festival bracelet. You use the bracelet to pay everywhere, and you can add money to it a range of payment methods, from using a visa or similar in their app, to visiting one of the cash places where you can use…

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.

[deleted]

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

#345

Post by Aeolun »

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…

This has been my experience going on holiday in the Netherlands. Everything functions on cards and touch payments.

I’m living in Japan where everything is cash, and it’s just such a culture shock to go to a place where I cannot simply pay for everything with cash...

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

#346

Post by NeedMoreTea »

o-o- wrote: post #330
nabla9 wrote: post #111

This is huge systemic risk (the possibility that an event at the company level could trigger severe instability or collapse an entire industry or economy). When the systems in major Nordic bank (Nordea, Danske Bank) or payment system (Visa, MasterCard) goes down, people can't do anything until it's fixed. These things are rare but they happen. Usually it's just few hours, but if the condition persists even few days i…

> if the condition persists even few days it becomes a major problem How much cash does a person keep handy? If the condition persists a few days, cash would also become a major problem.

Such as when the Irish banks went on strike for about 6 months in the 70s. Edit: It was a lockout not a strike.

They survived using olde worlde approaches with no loss of GDP growth or retail sales. The retailers and local pubs operated as banks and managed the movement of IOU credits and cheques. Publicans, as it turned out, were a pretty good gauge of credit-worthiness and extent. Cheques ended up counter signed dozens of times as they were passed on person to person many times. Retailers would offer cheque cashing to keep money circulating.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/pubs-replaced-banks-in-ireland...

Now try that with an app. :)

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

#347

Post by ryanwaggoner »

yongjik wrote: post #127
pessimizer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's why you don't have to worry about salmonella in your chicken sandwich or a steel beam falling onto your head at work. You have to worry about both of those things. Why? Because instead of forcing the placement of every steel beam and the sale of every chicken sandwich to pass through the hands of an intermediary who both profits from and regulates the action, we just decided to regularly inspect places where…

"If I take your argument and extrapolate until it sounds absurd, then it sounds absurd, therefore your original argument is invalid." Sorry, I'm not buying it.

No extrapolation needed, your original argument sounds absurd.

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

#348

Post by brownbat »

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.

Killer feature for me is that the same amount of physical mass can hold any amount of value.

Spending some cash sometimes increases the complexity of my pocket considerably, which is fine in practice and all, but just feels wrong to part of my brain.

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

#349

Post by chii »

mort96 wrote: post #251
gammateam wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> without going through a financial institution, yet had some recourse for fraudulent transactions

a contradiction right there. Security/freedom is a trade-off, and bitcoin has traded away some security for some freedom. Some people like that freedom, but some don't.

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

#350

Post by stale2002 »

gammateam wrote: post #267
mort96 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Lightning + Watchtowers Its coming For some of the other things, best practices prevent much of that. I could imagine a common practice where base layer transactions to open a channel use a joint account that requires X of Y signatures, where X-n keys are yours, and the remainder being a friend or actual intermediary business which only facilitates avoiding user error. After the channels are open it having no say in…

> Lightning + Watchtowers it's coming

Just another 18 month from now and I'm sure it will be finished.

I myself need to pay for food right now and I do not have time to wait for a solution that is perpetually years from completion.

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