Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

Post by yangmaster » Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 6:06 AM UTC

eksemplar wrote: post #123

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’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…

Post by lostapathy » Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 6:08 AM UTC

twunde wrote: post #309

Nition wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus a wired landline phone is always charged, with excellent reception.

Nitpick: typically they have excellent reception. _However,_ with many copper lines not being maintained and especially in some rural areas, reception can be awful to unusable.

Post by nickpsecurity » Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 6:21 AM UTC

angry_octet wrote: post #268

protomyth wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at a gas station in Grand Forks, ND in the middle of winter at 2AM fueling up. I had traveled this route and stopped at this gas station at about the same time of night multiple times when I was going from ND to MN and back. The card (Citibank Visa) had a large open credit line, but it somehow got rejected because (and I quote) "they installed new software"[1]. This was a bit before I had a cellphone and luckil…

I remember as a kid how much money my parents would have to carry while on holiday, banks were closed and ATMs rare and often empty, shops in the country often wouldn't take cheques. Credit cards resulted in really slow vendor payment (remember paper credit card chunk clunk? those numbers are raised for a reason) and caused cash flow issues. Anyway, one of the major telcos had an outage of their EFT system the last h…

Post by fractallyte » Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 6:31 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #370

dunnevens wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of an old scifi story. Someone in a far future or advanced alien society runs across a paper book. "A means of conveying information without needing power and without the risk of surveillance? Excellent!" (paraphrased from memory).

There was also that (Asimov? Clarke?) story about a space ship which has its computer knocked out by a meteoroid and can't navigate back to Earth until someone on-board turns out to know how to use an abacus.

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 6:38 AM UTC

tokyodude wrote: post #428

belorn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary cited reason for the cashless trend is the security against money laundering. My government has done every policy and regulative action they can to guarantee that all money transaction is recorded and a bank liable if anything is not clean.

The first time I experienced a cashless store was Amsterdam in 2013. It was a fast food restaurant. Of course at first I was a little upset but it did get me thinking what are the advantages to the store The store no longer has to go to the bank to get heaps of change The store no longer has to take money to the bank The store will have no money on premises so less of a target for robbery The store will have no money…