Sweden Moving Towards Cashless Economy

cold fjord writes "Sweden is rapidly moving towards a cashless economy. How will Sweden, and other countries in the future, balance efficiency, privacy, government control, and civil liberties? Or will they do all that technology allows? 'Bills and coins represent only 3 percent of Sweden's economy, compared to an average of 9 percent in the eurozone and 7 percent in the U.S. ... The Swedish Bankers' Association says the shrinkage of the cash economy is already making an impact in crime statistics. 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. The prevalence of electronic transactions — and the digital trail they generate — also helps explain why Sweden has less of a problem with graft than countries with a stronger cash culture, such as Italy or Greece, says economics professor Friedrich Schneider of the Johannes Kepler University in Austria. The flip side is the risk of cybercrimes. According to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention the number of computerized fraud cases, including skimming, surged to nearly 20,000 in 2011 from 3,304 in 2000.'"

Comments

Scary

[Hatta]

I don't care what sort of up sides it has. The government being able to track every last penny spent is far too frightening to even consider.

Re:Scary

[seven of five]

Don't worry... they're moving to Bitcoin.

Re:Scary

[judoguy]

VISA doesn't track every penny spent. I write credit card billing software. VISA, MC, et al just get a transaction total. Only the vendor knows what was charged. VISA can look at the vendor and make assumptions, however they don't know if I bought a lot of candy bars or gas or what mixture of transactions from a Mobil station.

Re:Scary

[MyLongNickName]

Monetary lesson: Our economy is based on goods and services. Money is only a medium for the exchange of those items. What you are suggesting is really going back to a barter system.

Second lesson: The "devaluation" that you speak of is called inflation. Yes, over time an individual dollar is worth less. We also make more of these dollars for our time. This is not some giant conspiracy.

Third lesson: Gold and land do not have a constant value. That is complete lunacy. Like every other good and service its value is relative to other goods and services

Fourth lesson: If you want to use gold as a curency, go for it. It doesn't change the underlying issue that it only stands in for the goods and/or services you wish to buy/sell.

Re:Scary

[vlm]

VISA does not know how many candy bars you bought, retail corporate does. Even back in the very early 90s I know for a fact they did, as I was getting interested in IT and our food store did complete transaction uploads nightly. Its not as much data as you'd think, even at 2400 baud. We had to upload distinct sales data anyway, think about it, otherwise how would automated push-ordering work? There were cube dwellers at corporate who's entire lives revolved around how many hamburger buns were sold the saturday of labor day or whatever.

So you are correct that VISA does not sell transaction detail records, but that doesn't mean they're not sold, it means the detail record comes from the retailer. At least it did 20 years ago.

Re:Scary

[vlm]

Wait - 20 years ago some corporate bod knew that Mr Smith of 23 Acacia Avenue bought hamburger buns? I think not.

Yes. 20 years ago is only 1992, not like the 60s or something. In 1990, 91, something like that our mid size grocery store in a mid size suburb of a mid size city got roughly 386 class machine (was it a 486?) in the managers office and it ran the dbms that read the upc from the scanner and told the register what to charge and its tax status. Also it kept a list of all loyalty cards who owed us money for bounced checks (at one point my job was keeping that list updated). We uploaded nightly at 1030 and woe to the assistant manager who couldn't "close out" before the upload began. Also we downloaded lists of bounced checks/loyalty cards from OTHER stores..

We made a big freaking deal about giving you coupons that reflected your previous purchases. Maybe, like 99% of the population, you just threw that out, but that doesn't mean we didn't print the coupons at the bottom of the register tape. You had a "check cashing/loyalty card", right? To at least some extent your coupons mailed to your door reflected your purchases... the presence or lack of baby formula and dog food tended to reflect your previous purchases... We didn't do individualized personalized coupon mailings, but we did classify them.

Now I donno if they stored all the data, or how long. Now a days you'd assume they keep it all forever. Back then I would assume they wiped whatever they thought appropriate when they needed space. At that time (err, 93 or so) I was using a 40 meg drive and a 386/40 with 5 megs ram to run SLS linux.. Can't store everything forever with that tech.

Didn't you notice that if you bought something with a CC and returned it with a receipt, we credited your card without asking to see it again? We had all that stored.

I suppose it depends on location, blah blah blah, but I was at a unnoteworthy little grocery store most nights while going to tech school in the day.

Re:Scary

[snowbored]

VISA sure as heck does know. How do you think you get double points for gas, or hotel stays, or whatever? Depending on the card, up to the first 19 items you purchase get sent back to VISA. So if you don't want a record that you bought something, make it your 20th item (and don't buy 20 oranges, I wrote the software smart enough to group the same items). They do only know generic things (you purchased a food item, not that your purchased a specific candy bar), but the generic list is broken down into things like alcohol, tobacco, so they do have information you might not want them to know like that last Friday you bought a six pack and some smokes from the corner gas station.

Re:Scary

[fahrbot-bot]

VISA does not know how many candy bars you bought, retail corporate does.

Target certainly knows this - and more. See this NYT article: How Companies Learn Your Secrets. From page 7 of 8:

About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation.

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

What about weed?

[TheTruthIs]

How will we buy weed in a cashless society where marijuana is illegal?

explains why they have less trouble with graft

[Attila Dimedici]

No, it does not explain why they have less trouble with graft. Scandinavian countries had less trouble with graft than Italy or Greece before there was even a concept of a cashless economy. It is a cultural thing. It is even possible that the same cultural factors that led them to have less trouble with graft also contribute to them moving so easily towards a cashless economy.