Earlier quoted context omitted.
Credit cards are much less heavily relied on in Europe than in the USA. Europe basically runs on debit cards that every kid can have and where the fees are minuscule. There are countless banks providing the service and everything is highly regulated. On top of that, Europe still curbed Visa and Mastercard several times for antitrust behaviour. And the idea that physical money primarily aids social fraud, money launde…
Where may I read about anything supporting your statement "cash is primarily used for illegal activities"? I highly doubt that this is the case, unless there are more illegal activities out there than legal ones.
> And the idea that physical money primarily aids social fraud, money laundering and other illegal activities is pretty well established.
Another plausible reading could be that this is just a widely believed incorrect thing (or most exactly, they are just saying it is widely believed, and not anything about the underlying truthfulness of the belief). This seems easy for somebody to observe about the society around them (although I bet it is a regional thing, or something like that) and less likely for there to be hard data on. Perception is also more likely than actual facts to drive behavior, right?
> They even killed the 500€ bank note, because it was almost exclusively used by criminals and most normal people never even touched one, much less used one for legit transactions.
This, on the other hand, seems like a specific action taken by the government to solve a specific problem, so I’d expect it to be well documented…