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Comment by Orphis | Hacker News Reader

The major issue I see regarding a cash-free society (which I am part of by living in Sweden) is that it puts a big burden on tourists who have to pay a huge amount of fees when using their own cards in a different currency.

It is also a bit similar for expats who, under certain conditions, can't apply for a Swedish person number (think SSN) and thus get a fully activated bank account. No bank account? Good luck doing anything!

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I for once love Swedish cashless society and have rarely been inconvenienced by it. People close to me have had issues due to not having a personnummer (thanks Migrationsverket). But then there are things like Revolut for example or Transferwise. This is how we got around it. Although for stuff like rent you're fresh out of luck if it's not second hand. And the fees for foreigners are for converting currency. Those you pay anyways regardless if you're converting cash or each of your electronic payments. I've also seen so called blackouts that people portray as the boogiemen and the result was not being able to pay for a couple of minutes. But I've also seen those with cash when electronic checkout systems were not functioning and the cashier could simply not print your receipt and take your cash money. And growing up in a more dangerous neighbourhood as a kid I can tell you all about what cash on you or in your house means :)

Regarding the receipt, one can always issue handwritten ones. It is a perfectly valid form of receipt, albeit tedious to issue.

I’ve paid with cash in many smaller shops and received handwritten receipts, one time after the receipt printer malfunctioned.

Yeah, I know that in Sweden it's for sure ok to give out handwritten receipts but I also know of a couple of countries that have a bit of a higher rate of tax avoidance schemes to not allow it. However even when allowed I doubt people would be eager to do it unless it was an exception and not the rule. We are moving to the new normal.

I'm not sure about other countries, but Australia has a number of cards with no fees on foreign currency transactions.

Disagree. It is only a problem for swish only transactions. For cards the fee is higher when you withdraw than when you pay directly,so in a foreign country I always try to pay by card.

In addition, handling cash in foreign countries is a huge hassle bebause you oftwn spend quite a lot so then you feel like a moving target for robbers. I never felt more unsafe than when I was with Colombia with 1000$ in cash to pay a big transaction. I had cash in sweden only once in my life and it got stolen in a commuter train. Never again!

The problem with Sweden and SSN is not really cash but everything else (privacy, accessibility, discrimination, administrative hassle, online accounts...).

Most probably would pay similar fees if they were converting to local cash currency, too.

This is untrue.

For tourists and Visa/MasterCard paying with a card is usually cheaper than withdrawing foreign cash at ATM.

With ATM you are slapped with a foreign withdrawal fee and you usually get worse exchange rate.

Depends on your credit card: it's not uncommon for them to also slap you with foreign transaction fees of 3% or higher.

In general, the hierarchy of fees is no-fee CC < regular CC < ATM withdrawal < exchange cash at destination < exchange cash somewhere else.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Some (but not all) of my American credit cards charge an explicit 3% foreign exchange conversion fee on top of whatever exchange rate they give you. It can happen even if the transaction is denominated in US dollars.

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