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Comment by Chrono | Hacker News Reader

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.

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As a Swede, I always bring cash. Heading to the bar? Already have cash in the wallet. Grabbing a taxi home late at night? No need to worry that I don't have enough cash on me.

Store temporarily only accept cash due to some error? Replace panic with nonexistent queue.

Regardless of whether you always pay cash or always pay with a card and regardless of whether you value privacy or not - you should always, in my opnion, have some cash with you. That has served me well and I've never in my life regretted having too much cash on me. The day I get robbed the cash I have on me is the least of my worries, if anything having an empty wallet might be provoking to someone that just tried to rob you (or a lot of money might get him (or her) greedy and ask for more, you never know).

Note to self: Get rid of (and remember) the CCV code on the card and destroy the magnet stripe on my card. Anything not working with the chip isn't worth the hassle nor worth the trust of using a card (that might sound strange for some but in Sweden the use of the magnet stripe is quite rare).

As a swede I never have cash on me anymore. But when I lived in Tokyo, the situation was reversed: low crime levels, high prices and nowhere to use a card, all contributed to me walking around with on average about $500 on any given day. That was a decade ago, though.

While you have a point about carrying cash I just have an irrational dislike towards change. The damn coins are heavy, close to worthless much of the time and overall annoying.

And I have barely ever encountered a situation where the card machine is broken,at least not in recent years but it can of course happen.

'Removing' the CCV and magnetic stripe is actually a good idea - Wouldn't trust most (Swedish) places that don't use the chip to read the card data.

My Uncle who was in the Merchant Marine always used to keep a decoy wallet with expired cards and a tiny amount of cash so that if he got mugged/pick pocketed he would not lose much,

All grocery stores around me use a sealed cash system. I've been more often stuck behind people wanting to pay with cash when the cash scanner breaks down compared to the card machine being down.

Out of your three examples, only the last one is an argument for cash over cards. Is that the reason why you prefer cash? Or is it the privacy thing?

Cash is faster, I have better control over my money (but that's just because of how I'm handling them, YMMV), and the privacy part doesn't hurt - That's more of a principle than anything else, I really feel that we must have a anonymous way for payments AND that the anonymous method must not in any way be suspected of foul play just for using it. That is the first "danger" that will come, that people get so accustomed to cards that the day someone wants to pay a packet of gum with cash you get suspicious - that is something that I will truly dislike. And given the current development I see no reason as to why that won't be the case in the semi-near future.

Also, cash is much safer. That everything that is needed to take money for me is written on a card that I have to pick out for every purchase is beyond lunacy. And people actually have stomach to say that post-it notes with your password is bad (it is, but in perspective)...

So part of why I mostly use cash is of principle, cards are just so insecure. It's not that I'm afraid I'll get in trouble but part is principle and the other part is that I have no idea if my "secret" number is revealed to the wrong person. 8 months later I'll potentially be denied a purchase because the card is empty...

I do however use my card from time to time, but mostly cash. And so far the benefits of using cash are actually greater than that of a card in my eyes - so even without the benefit of security and privacy I'd still use cash.

As a Swede, I can't recall the last time I used cash in a normal commercial context - that is, not dealing directly with another private citizen - since I turned 18 and got my debit card 13 years ago. I can't recall the last time I used the magnetic strip either. It's all chip for me, and it's free of charge barring the 25 SEK (~2.5 EUR) per month the bank asks me for my complete account setup.

MM so your the annoying person who isn't organized enough to bring cash and causes long queues at the bar or coffee shop when I am buying my morning coffee and paper at the train station.

The more you use your card the more chance of getting skimmed using cash for small purchases is a way of reducing your attack surface.

You are welcome! :)

No really, the card readers are damn quick these days so it hardly takes much longer than paying with cash but I admit that it takes slightly longer. I would argue that most people pay their morning coffee with card in Sweden.

I have used my card all over the world, for small and large purchases, and have yet to get it skimmed - lucky I guess.

But another aspect of increased card use is that tax fraud becomes harder for the businesses as I believe the logging of card transactions are quite a lot harder to hide from the tax authority so I do see that as a positive thing.

At my medium sized local station around 2k people catch trains within 45 mins every morning so cash is much much faster and allows a greater through put of transactions.

We all use smart cards and no one pays at point of transport...

The more you use your card the more chance of getting skimmed using cash for small purchases is a way of reducing your attack surface.

I don't get why people care about this. Credit card fraud is the bank's problem, not mine.

not these days chip and pin pushes it more towards the end consumer and who do you think pays the bill for fraud the banks customers do

To me it's common decency to not be negligent and I deeply dislike the opinion that "the bank will cover it".

For starters it's irresponsible, secondly the cost goes back to the banks customers anyway. But also, one day the bank will say no. You didn't do what we expect of you, we will not give you anything.

This is not that uncommon and if it happens you might loose a lot (although to keep good faith and keep people using the cards the banks usually go to great lengths to cover up that fraud ever happens and they usually repay losses of their customers, but I seriously do not get why anyone would be willing to take that risk - even the hassle of having to get in touch with your bank and temporarily be out on a lot of money etc. is enough to avoid that risk).

Not to mention that I don't feel like "it's okay, the bank took care of it" is okay. The bad guys got away with it and that is never okay.

Leaving your credit card sitting out unattended on a park bench is negligent. Buying things with a credit card is not negligence.

There is also the risk that they steal small amounts from you and you don't realize it. This won't happen if you check your statements but I don't always and there are enough small charges for me not to notice if I was charged a small amount extra every month.

Skimming is only a problem for magnetic stripe readers, which at least here in Portugal are increasingly rare.

Chip based readers are safe, since the chip actually performs cryptographic operations itself - the private key is never copied out.

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