In Sweden, cash is king no more (opens in new tab)

As a Swede I am used to always being able to pay with my card; Heading to the bar? No need to withdraw cash. Grabbing a taxi home late at night? No need to worry if you have enough cash, they accept cards.

To add to this is that electronic transfer of money to both businesses and private citizens is quick and easy. If you transfer within the same bank it is instant and takes up to a day, depending on the hour, to transfer between banks.

Swede here, and as paranoid as the next person. I moved from Gmail due to privacy concerns. I block a lot of tracking domains at DNS level.

However, those are trade-offs with very little negative impact in my daily routines. A slightly worse UI for my email is nothing like moving from cards back to cash. It would be like moving from the Internet back to snail mail because email is insecure, or perhaps to Stallman type email/wget web browsing. Simply not worth it.

Speaking of snail mail, I send a handful of those a year and barely know where to put the stamp. I handle my taxes, student loans, banking, social insurance (for my kid), etc, online.

I would love better regulations for usage of consumer data, but cash? No way.

Do the Visas and Mastercards of Sweden still get their cut of every transaction? What a great way for these companies to solidify their corner of the market.

Here is what I want: a way to do electronic transactions anonymously and cheaper that the current options. How do you do this while combating fraud?

I would have to trust my government a whole lot more than I do to be comfortable with this - and then trust that my government isn't going to change over the course of my lifetime.

Surely Swedes buy drugs and cheat on their taxes, just like the rest of us. Even if you don't - why wouldn't you want to ensure you can quietly conduct an illegal transaction, should a currently unforseen need arise in the future? Getting rid of cash seems awfully shortsighted.

I wonder what that would do to the illegal drug industry.

Why can't a thief force you to transfer money electronically just like the money was transfered for the church donation? (I am not saying that the church donation was coerced.)

Cash is remarkably resistant to all the potential problems that could disable credit card transactions. For example, in 2003, much of the northeastern U.S. was affected by a power blackout that lasted over a day in some places, and of course credit card readers require power to operate. The servers that support credit card transactions have backup power (although only for a limited amount of time), but they're also vulnerable to network outages, software failures and deliberate attacks (we've seen how bad some of our major banks are at security). Having cash as a backup seems to be a prudent choice.

So in a few years, the govt. will get a report at the end of the year showing that model Swede citizen has bought more than the recommended amount of meat or alcohol or, heavens forbid, has bought tobacco products. And not enough fruit/veggies. So the friendly Swede govt. will "recommend" that model Swede citizen fork over an insane amount of money and "optionally" attend re-education classes in healthy living. Can you spell Big, Big, Big Brother?

Not necessarily a good thing. No cash means no privacy.

Swede here. There is a part of the article that warrants special attention:

> The number of bank robberies in Sweden plunged from 110 in 2008 to 16 in 2011 — the lowest level since it started keeping records 30 years ago. It says robberies of security transports are also down.

It was not long ago when armed robberies of security transports were a serious serious problem. Now when the article mentions it, I make a mental note that this has indeed decreased a lot. I think only a few years ago Sweden had lots more robberies of vehicles than the neighbouring countries. There were discussion about arming the guards, but it was argued that would escalate the violence. We have also seen many movie-like heists, the last (widely reported one) was a heist involving explosives, helicopters and sabotage of police helicopters. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4stberga_helicopter_robbe...)

I don't know but I assume that decreasing cash usage has been an active decision to combat the armed transport robberies.

In New Zealand, we use cards for _everything_. Taxis, corner shops, bars...

However, cash still pays a massive part in our economy. Mostly for people who want to remain anonymous with their transactions. Heaps of livelihoods depend on cash; farmers markets etc.

I haven't noticed this at all, except for the public transportation. If anything, there are plenty of businesses that won't accept cards under a certain limit (usually 100 crowns, or about $15).

Maybe it would be better to get rid of muggers instead of cash?

"One should be able to send money and donate money to different organizations without being traced every time," he says."

That's a tough problem, which the US government will demand of foreign governments and fight tooth and nail at home.

"If there were no cash, what would they do?" says Ulvaeus, 66.

Well, he's in for a surprise ...

I think this (article page) comment says a lot about the real motivation:

"...So instead of taking the very SMALL and SLIM chance I'll get robbed by a street thug - I should switch to digital currency and just allow the banks to DEFINITELY ROB me... yeah, right..."

I also found it interesting that the article made no mention at all about the tourism industry.

So, already five strong reasons why cash will not go out of fashion any time soon:

1. Privacy.

2. Tourism.

3. Cost (tends to be important for non-banks). Both on-going and capital costs.

4. Store of value (tends to be important for elderly and some wealthy people). This can also cover electrical failure, database corruption or theft, including government or non-government financial fraud or error.

5. Ease of use (tends to be very important for elderly).

In addition, there is simply no viable alternative that covers all or even most of the above.

A lot of voices in this thread seem concerned about the extra power this would grant the Swedish government. I'm confused: if anything, wouldn't this give the government less control? I'd be more afraid of Visa/MasterCard having a monopoly on simple transactions. Maybe eventually the credit card company's networks will be deemed a public good, and then government will take over the payment processing infrastructure, but until then I think the corporate overlord scenario is much scarier.

I expirienced the exact opposite in Maebashi Japan circa 2003. We had to go to Tokyo to find a place to get some cash out of our foreign issued credit cards, and even the local ones were not universally accepted. For such a high-tech nation as Japan I was completely shoked.

In combination with the transaction tax (currently discussed in the EU - [1]), this is a killer tool, to get more money from citizens.

Also: how is this supposed to deal with power outages? No food, when there is no electricity?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax

The culture is based on government rule and control+high taxes, this is the next logical step and it doesn't surprise me.