Sweden is a nearly cashless society – how it affects people who are left out | Hacker News Reader

Sweden is a nearly cashless society – how it affects people who are left out

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30 pointsPaulHoule64 comments

I am a Swedish citizen living in Sweden. I pay as much as I can in cash.

What the article didn't mention is the payments system Swish requires an Android or Apple phone, and the electronic ID mentioned requires one of those phone OSes or a Microsoft or Apple desktop OS.

There is no solution for those who don't want sign a contract with a US IT giant, or those who want better privacy, or those who only want to use free software. Remember too that every single one of those US companies is required to follow US surveillance laws.

Bank cards are an option (though several places are SWIFT-only), but they depend on having a bank account, and the banks depend on SWIFT, which the US controls.

Last year the US designated two white-supremacist Swedes as international terrorists, as well as their organization, which meant they all lost bank access, and therefore digital id. See https://www.etc.se/inrikes/efter-terrorklassningen-svenska-b... (requires subscription), translation here:

> One of the leaders classified as a terrorist, a 50-year-old man, name not given, says to [the local radio service] that his bank account and card have stopped working. He says he left [the white-supremacist organization] 1 and 1/2 years ago.

> "It's completely crazy [...] I haven't done any crime."

It doesn't matter if you agree with the classification or not. What's wrong is that Sweden has decided to use a system of electronic payments and identification which is so completely dependent on the US that a foreign country can have such intimate control over a Swedish citizen living in Sweden.

It doesn't even need to be terrorism. Google or Apple can decide to close your account at any time, without appeal. The Swedish courts cannot order them to re-enable it.

We know this from articles like "A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal" and closed his account, at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... and "HC notice to Google India after engineer loses access Gmail, Google Drive, and more over childhood photo labelled 'porn'" https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/hc-...

Think about those two cases as the EU mulls over so-called "Chat Control", with strong support by the Swedish government.

Flip it over - the dependency on three large US companies makes it almost impossible to boycott those companies, no matter how bad they are or might be. And they are bad.

The lack of cash payment also limits what my kids can do on their own - much more than when I was a kid. Want to play mini-golf? Need a bank card or Swish. Want to go swimming? Need a bank card or Swish. At least the ice cream place accepts cash, but they don't provide change so you better have the exact amount.

Yes, kids can get a bank card, but while I'm fine giving my 8-year-old 100 kronor / $10 for a day out on his own, he still loses his library card, forgets his gloves, etc - I don't think he's yet able to keep track of a bank card, much less a smartphone from a company I don't trust.

And unlike a can with money, you can't look at a card to figure out how much is available.

Regarding kids on their own: have you considered Revolut?

What advantage would that have over what my bank currently offers to kids? How does it address "I don't think he's yet able to keep track of a bank card, much less a smartphone from a company I don't trust."?

How will I, as a parent without a smartphone, manage my kids' account?

FWIW, I live two floors above the main branch in the city for my bank.

I have deep distrust of anything like frequent flier miles and store memberships as I know they are bribing me with my own money and/or building up a persona to try and sell me more, so seeing "RevPoints" marketing on their home page triggers alarm bells in my head. It means they are building on a system which is already extracting too much money from customers, so we need stronger regulations limiting the excess overhead.

I have no idea about your bank offerings, but compared to _my_ bank Revolut had much fewer hoops to jump through when opening a child's account. As for being able to keep track - it depends on what "keep track" means for you. It is not possible to understand how much money is left by just looking at the card, and having the account costs some fee (quite small to me and I have my "main" account anyway), but the card itself is free and it is possible to block it (unlike a lost 100SEK banknote). And it seems possible to manage accounts through a web browser (assuming you are not completely against using a computer).

> There is no solution for those who don't want sign a contract with a US IT giant, or those who want better privacy, or those who only want to use free software.

DFRI are working towards a FOSS solution[1].

[1] https://www.dfri.se/projekt/e-legitimation/

Thank you. I am already on their list. I don't have the technical abilities to contribute to the project.

I moved to Sweden three months ago. The article is good in pointing out that a cashless society has runaway effects to other social systems. Despite being in one of the best situations possible (EU citizen, works in tech, has assistance from locals) and being proactive about it, I am still without a Swedish bank account. In order to have an unrestricted one, you need to have Swedish ID, which is a multi-step process that requires registration with a Swedish address. Having acquired ID recently, my application has been sent, but the bank can potentially refuse it.

This locks me out of BankId, which locks me out of large sectors of society. Bank accounts in my native country are supposed to be closed once one no longer resides there, but doing that is simply not an option if I want to survive.

It is very easy to accidentally design systems that lock out foreigners moving into a country. The EU must oversee member states on this aspect or this will effectively destroy our freedom of movement.

I live in Norway, and can't really remember the last time I paid anything with cash. I do have relatives in rural areas, and the only real problem they've encountered has been due to KYC policies, where they'd have to drive 100 km to the nearest bank to show ID.

From time to time I see some people campaigning on social media to get back ATMs and similar (yes, there are towns here that don't even have ATMs anymore - they're just terribly expensive to operate, when less than 5% or so of the population withdraw cash...you can withdraw and deposit cash at super markets), but honestly the arguments tend to be somewhat flimsy.

It's usually some constructed scenario like "If I want to withdraw money in the middle of the night, on a Sunday, I can't do that!" or "I went to the [local supermarket] and tried to withdraw [tens of thousands of NOK] and they didn't have enough!"

Every single news article I've seen on people being "unbanked" has boiled down to those people refusing to sign some KYC agreement, or refusing to show up at the bank.

One vacation in a European country my credit card simply didn't work due an error made by the bank (which would only have surfaced if I had overdrawn a limit while at home).

One vacation in central america the ATM just swallowed my card - on a Saturday night and it was unclear when the bank would be open again.

One vacation in another country the ATM kept my card and told me it had expired - ok, so that one WAS my fault, but we're already at example #3.

Yes, maybe those are exceptions and people living there are better prepared/have friends/whatever - but I have simply experienced it failing. Cash has never let me down, as long as the other party accepts it or that one time when my wallet was stolen.

I know a lot of American tourists have historically had issues in Sweden with credit cards not having NFC chips.

Is that still the case?

If not, I would just prepare my phone/smart watch with apple/google pay. Hopefully ATMs won't swallow those.

Never been to Sweden, so no idea, sorry.

My understanding from most EU countries I visited is that VISA/MC works and AMEX usually doesn't. Also now that I think about it, most of these things (except #3) happened before the widespread use of NFC. (IIRC 2017 and 2012).

My points were more "why would 100% cash-free bad", not necessarily just in Sweden.

They started issuing them with chips a couple years ago. Most should have been replaced by now.

But yes, this was a slight issue when traveling in previous times. Glad the US finally caught up.

A week ago my card stopped working suddenly. When I opened the bank app to check the balance I found that my card is not listed there - as if I've never had it (the linked account was intact though). It was a holiday so customer support responded with "if you don't want to block your card - come tomorrow at 9AM". Only after a few hours a warning appeared in the app that the bank currently has issues with some cards.

As a Swede living abroad this creates a headache when going back. When combined with swish needs a phone number but to get a phone number you need to have a registered address, etc.

When do you need to pay with Swish and can't instead use a normal credit/debit card?

Good luck getting a debit card without an address.

The rely was to a Swede who lives abroad and comes back to visit Sweden.

Presumably they have cards they can bring with them on the trip that work in Sweden even though their address is outside Sweden?

I know when I travel abroad I just take and use my normal cards without a problem.

If you're living abroad and visiting you'd probably already have a debit card, no need to open a new one for a visit. This is only relevant for Swish because it's not something someone living outside of Sweden would likely already have.

One example is flee markets, or different type of second hand. Christmas markets etc. Some do accept debit / credit cards but a lot is swish only.

For cards, depends on the bank. I know my bank at-least do send the card abroad to my current home and as long as i keep my digital authenticator ID (bank ID) i am able to access that, renew cards. Do most banking services etc.

I also managed to get a new bank authenticator by going to the embassy and get signed papers etc, however it took about 5 months or so if you don't have any cash that might become a issue. :)

Lots of smaller cafes or people running various stall style businesses only accept Swish, especially out the in more rural areas. I've been to a couple of smaller festivals where the only way to pay for a ticket at the 'door' was with Swish.

Plus of course any time you need to give money to an actual person and not a business.

I'm also a Swede living abroad. I have signed up with Swish using a non-Swedish phone number (but with Swedish bank account), it works fine in most cases. I do have an address though, but not in Sweden.

This is a real and important problem: lots of countries have a System, like Vipps or WeChat Pay, which works brilliantly for local residents but is inaccessible to non-residents. Even if (as it sounds like in your case) you're a national but not a resident.

I think like most people I'm conflicted on this:

- for me personally cashless is fine and way more convenient

- I can totally see why a minority of other people don't find that

- some people are excluded from the system for bad reasons

- some people are excluded from the system for ""good"" reasons, or at least reasons that get deep into unpopular public policy (should you be allowed to use the cashless system for crime/drugs/terrorism/funding hostile countries/taking bribes from hostile countries?)

- cash handling is NOT free, ask any small business

- as a Scot, I'm used to the idea that paper money isn't quite as universal as you might expect

How else are you going to buy drugs tho? Or pay for other basic needs that your government may find unnecessary?

I am not in the business, but would it be practical to use bitcoins/*-coins for this?

Hell no, not even close. You are suggesting using an even more public ledger to do things that ostensibly you NEED cash for.

There is little space for PUBLIC and AUDITABLE ledgers of any kind when discussing private payment.

Actually I'd be even more worried about the transaction cost "Sorry, I HAD to buy 3 kilos, just because of the overhead. It's a bit like mininum amount for free shipping, you know?" :P

Thanks! As I said I am not in the business.

My impression is that bitcoins contain a lot of dark money. How is this handled then with regards to sanctions or money laundering for example?

As soon as you want to exchange bitcoin to something real world'ish you are telling some company that the sending wallet is yours, which is now attached to bank details or even more verification. All transactions are public.

There is XMR (Monero) which solves the transparency issue of bitcoin and seems popular in the dark web.

I highly doubt I would find any dealer on the street taking crypto tho. Alone the transaction times of 10+ minutes don't fit in a real world drug exchange.

I think cashless, in the sense of "all money is digital", is probably a net bad thing. Remember, there are governments and organizations today that don't believe in basic freedoms: one could, for example, know if someone gets an abortion by looking at their payments history. The privacy cash provides is important for society as a whole.

On the other hand, I think a lot of this "cashless" debate can be fixed by mandating any merchant of goods or services to accept cash. Parking meters, brick-and-mortar stores, etc. have all been accepting cash for a long time, so it's a solved problem.

The thing about the "I need cash in order to do things the government doesn't want me doing" is that it's just incredibly precarious. Very difficult to use that as an argument to government or its supporters. And it tends to "evaporate" over time as people stop using cash for "legitimate" purposes. So you end up with nonsense like US asset forfeiture, where the police can simply steal your cash.

> mandating any merchant of goods or services to accept cash

The fewer people actually use this option, the more likely the merchant is to be very passive-agressive about refusing it. Like claiming not to have change.

What happens when there's an internet outage?

A cashless society works fine in the sunshine case, but it's not inconceivable that the network could go down in various crisis scenarios for an extended period of time (days). Economic transactions still need to happen ...

As I recall there was some news about this a while back, the Swedish central bank looking into crisis scenarios.

Only found this one in Swedish: https://www.riksbank.se/sv/press-och-publicerat/nyheter-och-...

I work at a swedish bank. We spend very much time and effort to prepare for different situations such as that. Some preparation is required by the EU Dora act: https://www.digital-operational-resilience-act.com/ (yes I know that HN hates all EU regulations)

Being a cashless society does require some extra emergency planning, but I feel confident that Sweden has prepared as well as you could ever expect for such a crisis.

What preparations that a bank does in any way helps all the actual people out in the world?

The net is inaccessible in a way the bank can't fix. Broken cables or something cuts off a whole area even if the bank and the city the bank is in are up.

Is there an established fallback that everyone knows about and is ready to use?

Credit cards used to have a fallback methilod (which was the primary method originally), where if the pos system is out, a business can still process a transaction off-line by taking an impression of your card with a carbonless receipt in this purely mechanical device. The receipts are all deposited at the bank at a later time.

Unless there is some fallback like that that's actually ready to go and everyone is ready to use when needed, then how do you buy soup and heating fuel? Hand written IOU's?

Every time I've seen a payment system unavailable, the various goods and services simply stopped. Even food and fuel. At all big and little scales.

Here in the US a few years ago hackers took down some computers relating to a major oil pipe. For something like a few weeks a big chunk of the country couldn't get fuel. It later came out that the computers that were affected were only related to billing, NOT anything about actually operating the pipe. Fuel could have been flowing the whole time. Rather than allow any tiny chance of a billing discrepency, they stopped the flow and let everyone freeze and starve and die from lack of ambulances etc. (a little hyperbole, idk if anyone actually died that could be tied back to the fuel cutoff)

This and other examples tells me that when "merely the billing" is down, that the goods and services stop too, and all of them, not just the luxuries. It is not valid to propose that grocery stores and gas stations will switch to some emergency humanitarian mode of operation for the duration of an emergency and figure out the crass money later.

I live in a major city where people also don't use cash. Some older people still do, but absolute most transactions are cashless, especially if you'd ask eg a coffee shop or a restaurant. It is about 99:1 - 97:3 ratio of cashless:cash.

Internet outages are extremely rare and are fixed in just about an hour, be it a major backbone outage, a bank server outage, or a local wire cut. In this case, most cafes will switch to a mobile hotspot connection.

Not an issue, and wasn't for like last 10 years. I honestly don't remember when I had cash on me.

> Not an issue, and wasn't for like last 10 years. I honestly don't remember when I had cash on me.

I'm not talking about normal day-to-day life. I'm thinking of massive hacker / DDOS attack, radio interference, EMP attack or some equivalent natural disaster (extremely strong solar flares). Switching to hotspot won't help, since that obviously won't work either.

Happened in Ireland a few times:

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/05/06/archives/money-circulates...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_bank_strikes_(1966%E2%80...

Exactly what you'd expect to happen in Ireland happened.

People just need to eat shit and accept it. Two years ago I returned to Sweden over holiday, and local mall (2nd biggest in the country) had an internet outrage. Apparently some construction worker cut the wrong cable somewhere

You can imagine the chaos. Grocery store line got long and many people couldn't buy the dinner for their day, I saw some people calling their partners asking if they had cash. (grocery store at least accept cash)

If say a east European nation decided to invade here, all they need is to blast internet and chaos(looting) would ensure.

I live in Switzerland and use cash on a weekly basis. I typically pay by card when grocery shopping at a supermarket, and cash for everything/everywhere else.

I know a couple of people who live cash-only (they are normal people btw, not anti-surveillance militants or anything like that).

The ability to transfer money anonymously and independently of any third party system (even electricity or internet provider!) is extremely valuable imo and I foster the system by using it enough to help keep it alive.

Can't remember the last time I paid cash, or saw anyone else using cash, not even at markets and things. Sweden really is cashless these days. And it works incredibly well.

The old people I know all manage to use cards just fine. Most have Swish too.

The 'unbanked' mentioned in the article are rare, but perhaps the solution is not to bring back cash but rather offer limited banking to the currently unbanked?

I only see cash being used more often in the suburbs of Stockholm, actually now that I think of it's quite common to see someone handing even coins to the cashiers in Norsborg, Alby, Masmo, Vårby, and some other distant suburbs.

It is quite incredible to me that Sweden doesn't have a bank of last resort to cater for the people the big banks don't care about.

The best they have is SBAB which is a partially state-owned bank but they focus more on mortgages.

Brazil has one (Caixa Economica Federal) for example.

I go to history events held monthly at the downtown library, in the afternoons. That means it's mostly retirees and me (it's an advantage of being self-employed and often, like now, working while at the library).

They ask for 20 kronor for fika. While the organizers accept Swish, the large majority of attendees pay in cash.

The thing about a cashless society is everything is traced and stored effectively forever. A greater concern is a single point of control.

As long as you're not forced to use the cancer that is Android or iOS.. Then it's ok.. Otherwise that should be illegal.

The mobile payment app Swish requires Android or iOS.

The electronic ID needed to access public services, etc. works best on Android or iOS, though there are macOS and MS Windows options.

Valid conversation to figure who is/could be left out of a cashless society. It is better to handle the minority of edge cases than to keep cash around. There should be a system for the unhoused and migrants to be able to sign up for cashless payments rather than keeping cash around just for those few cases.

I have a friend of mine (here in Sweden) who is very bad at keeping track of the money in her account. She prefers using cash because that way show knows exactly what she has.

As for edge cases, the city I live in does provide a service to help retired people who have a bank account (and bank card) but no smartphone, and who need a way to pay for services like grocery delivery which are smartphone-only. (They have some method to turn it into a giro payment, but I don't know the details.)

In Brazil there is a very successful cash alternative called PIX. My personal problem with it is that I still can't find a single FLOSS app to use it. For now, I have to resort to cash or cards.

For people who don't want to depend on proprietary software to make payments, what are the current trends and alternatives?

Its great being able to halt a whole country's economy by just attacking either the power network or the payment network. Its a huge hassle when it happens due to incompetence, so imagine how bad it will be if its caused by a bad (state) actor. That alone is reason enough to never drop cash.

I am not convinced cash should be kept around for tail cases like this. If the power is out across a country, we have a lot bigger issues. If its just the payment network, well even if you kept cash in the system, who actually has it? If the payment network is down would the ATMs be down as well? I know even in America I am not carrying more than $100 in cash usually and often its $0.

An upside of a cashless society is the lack of bags of cash being seen flowing through airports at election time. So in other ways, cashless makes a country more resilient.

It is an interesting point and I do wonder how much harder it makes money laundering?

Brazil instituted a cash-back system where any receipt that is created you can opt into putting your name/ID on it tying it to your person, even for cash transactions. You get around 0.5% cash-back if you do.

This is still important even for non-cash transactions because Brazil has quite strict financial secrecy laws (ie law enforcement can't see into your bank account without a warrant). So you have to opt-into giving the government this data.

I am not sure if it is good for money laundering (I assume it helps), but it massively reduced tax avoidance.

Sitka lost their fiber optic link last summer. No internet, no cell phones, no texting, no credit cards. Lasted for days.

https://www.wrangellsentinel.com/story/2024/09/11/news/sitka... reports some of the consequences.

That is one of the reasons some governments have now stopped pushing the cashless society. In the Netherlands this realisation has set in, and the central bank now explicitly recommends people keep a sensible stash of cash for the inevitable (short term) crisis. Cash is a very useful tool when your digital infrastructure is being targetted.

Personally, while I will gladly pay with a contactless debit card, I refuse to shop at places which refuse cash. In the Netherlands, this is still rare though.

Besides, what about tourism? Even within Europe there is no guarantee my cards will just work in all places. Mostly? Yes. Always? Nope. Card fails? Just switch to cash. Going antiquing, or rifling through second hand book stalls at a book fair? Cash only is quite common there. It's not like I'll ever travel without cash.

Björn Eriksson, formerly chief of police of Sweden (rikspolischef) is opposed to the cashless society which he - and I agree with him here - thinks will lead to a 'digital dictatorship' [1, Swedish, feed it to a translator if you don't speak børk børk børk]. For those who have any doubt I'd just point to the way the soon-to-be-previous Canadian government tried to quell the trucker protests - by blocking their bank accounts - and the spate of 'de-banking' episodes which hit those who went against some desired narrative. Not that such examples should be necessary here given that everyone frequenting this forum probably knows how easy it is to both track as well as block digital transactions:

I'm sorry Dave but I can not let you buy more ${product} today, you have reached your quota for this month

Your purchase of ${product} will be ${percentage}% more expensive for reasons of product access equity

Or, the opposite:

Registered ${party} members get ${percentage}% off around ${election} time at ${store} - register now!

So, pay with cash every now and then, shun places which explicitly state not to accept cash when alternative venues are available in the area, support proposals to mandate traders to accept cash.

https://radio.bubb.la/inslag/2018-12-02-003

Cashless thing in sweden is whatever these days, what is still amazing compared to other countries is BankID. A universal auth, 2FA and digital signing system that any company can use for a very small fee.

You login to pretty much all government services and a lot of private ones using it. In Sweden if you have BankID you can:

- login to the national healthcare service (1177.se) and see your medical records and all drugs that have ever been prescribed to you (although it is not 100% coverage on all healthcare practitioners yet)

- Open a bank account in a lot (most?) banks in a couple of minutes online

- Login to the tax agency and do your tax declaration (which is usually just pressing "Send" for most people)

- Login to the state pension fund and move your pension from one pension provider to another. As well as login to any of the pension providers to allocate your pension on funds you chose

- Authorize credit card purchases (using 3-D Secure)

- Login to the Metro company to attach your metro card to your ID in case you lose it

- A bunch of other things

But yeah, if you don't have this BankID system (which requires a bank account and thus an ID-number/ID-card and thus residency in sweden) it is a nightmare. Affects everyone who moves into Sweden, it can take quite some time to have all the pre-requisites to get BankID.

While if you don't want to sign a contract with a foreign IT company in order to access those government services online, you have a lot of extra work ahead of you which used to be a lot easier.

Like, my eldest's school stopped using paper notices two years ago, and this month will switch to an app-only notification system, while I have no smartphone and in any the government can't force me into a contract where I would give up privacy rights just to have a kid in school. ... I hope.

So, paper and in-person visits for me, and some online purchasing banks (Klarna) don't support non-BankID 2FA, and a regular transit card.

And as of yesterday, school messages sent by email. We'll see how that works out.

I visited sweden same issue i faced.

I would be 100% of board with cashless society if it weren't for these kyc requirements. I consider the ability to use capital discretely at our own discretion is fundamental to freedom within the framework of a capitalist society. For that reason, I'd really prefer if there were alternative ways to pay using stablecoins. preferably with obfuscated transaction logs like monero.

Without that, it becomes easier for politicians to restrict free speech

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