Swedes Turn Against Cashlessness (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It is hard to argue that you cannot trust the government when the government isn't really all that bad. This is the problem facing the small but growing number of Swedes anxious about their country's rush to embrace a cash-free society. Most consumers already say they manage without cash altogether, while shops and cafes increasingly refuse to accept notes and coins because of the costs and risk involved. Until recently, however, it has been hard for critics to find a hearing. "The Swedish government is a rather nice one, we have been lucky enough to have mostly nice ones for the past 100 years," says Christian Engstrom, a former MEP for the Pirate Party and an early opponent of the cashless economy. "In other countries there is much more awareness that you cannot trust the government all the time. In Sweden it is hard to get people mobilized."

There are signs this might be changing. In February, the head of Sweden's central bank warned that Sweden could soon face a situation where all payments were controlled by private sector banks. The Riksbank governor, Stefan Ingves, called for new legislation to secure public control over the payments system, arguing that being able to make and receive payments is a "collective good" like defense, the courts, or public statistics. "Most citizens would feel uncomfortable to surrender these social functions to private companies," he said. "It should be obvious that Sweden's preparedness would be weakened if, in a serious crisis or war, we had not decided in advance how households and companies would pay for fuel, supplies and other necessities." The report mentions a recently-released opinion poll, which found that seven out of 10 Swedes wanted to keep the option to use cash, while just 25% wanted a completely cashless society.

Comments

Re:Why would you want cashless?

[ShanghaiBill]

Even from a business owner's perspective, there's nothing that says your business has to accept cash payments

But if few businesses accept cash, and you can't actually use cash to buy groceries, then you have a de facto cashless society.

For businesses, cash means crime. Both employee theft and robberies. Cash transactions are also slower than just waving your phone, which raises costs. Cashless self-checkout kiosks are cheaper and less error prone than those that handle cash.

I spent two months working in Shanghai last fall. I ate hundreds of meals, visited dozens of shops, and exchanged money with co-workers. Of all those transactions, this many involved cash: 0.

How can businesses refuse cash?

[93 Escort Wagon]

That part of the submission confused me - if payment is offered and If it’s the coin of the realm, how can they legally decline it? It’s not like “cashless” transactions aren’t using the same currency.

Re:Why would you want cashless?

[TheRaven64]

I can just wave my phone? Do I have to flip it open, or can I leave it shut? And how do I pay to refill the phone with the phone?

Not sure about Sweden, but in the UK most places now do contactless EMV transactions with either a phone or a card. If you use a card, you just put it on the terminal and about a second later it beeps and it's done. If you use a phone, it's the same thing but you have to touch the fingerprint sensor as well (for Apple Pay, I've never seen anyone use Google Pay). I prefer to have a separate physical token that doesn't have the ability to run malware, so I don't use the phone, but with the card it takes less time than for cash:

• Both need me to get my wallet out of my pocket.
• Both need me to get something out of my wallet.
• Only cash requires me to get out a quantity that differs depending on my final amount (so I can't get it out until that's calculated).
• Both require me to hand something over, but in the case of the card I just tap it on the reader for a second, for cash I hand it across the counter or feed it into a machine.
• Only cash requires someone to calculate change and give it to me.

My local convenience has self-service checkouts and it takes their UI a couple of seconds to step through the payment screen. I pop my card on the card reader before I tap the last step of the UI and it's done by the time I reach over to pick it up again.