Why Sweden is abandoning its cashless society

Good on Sweden for going against the trend of ever increasing digitisation which is only going to be used against their citizens in bad ways.

It wasn’t so convenient during the Iberian power blackout last year when all the electronic payment machines were out of action.

Cyberattacks on infrastructure are increasing.

National resilience/contingency is worth thinking about too.

Besides this, people should be rewarded for using cash for purchases, as they both forego convenience for helping build a resilient society, and are more likely to be funding local businesses than large multinationals.

In my experience, the elderly can forget or mixup their card pins frequently enough to be annoyed by the ordeal. They are also more prone to expose their pins to others and be the target of theft.

>It would be straightforward to establish the right to a free basic bank account (with transaction limits) for the homeless & (formerly) unbanked.

The whole point is that in a cashless society the dependence on digital bank accounts is considered a single point of failure even for the banked, never mind the unbanked. The elderly and the homeless are also less equipped in knowing how to resolve problems that require digital solutions compared to the others.

I never has a fee for any bank for depositing cash, even up to a few thousand. I really doubt that will happen unless you walk in with millions. In that case you will have more to worry about that fees.

It's not a fair characterisation that cash is useless without electricity because once you have it(presumably before the electricity stops) then you can still transact with it.

In a shorter term crisis, I can absolutely imagine smaller grocery stores near me using a cashbox for takings and recording purchases with a pen and paper. Any government would be highly supportive of this as it would be essential to prevent anarchy.

When something like that comes, you find a way or the business goes elsewhere. Taxes? Count the cash - that's what you sold during the power out. Multiply by the tax rate, and call it square.

They don't have a piece of paper and a calculator as backup?

And even in cases like Maduro who is a wanted criminal and I believe would be easily proven to have committed crimes against humanity, the lack of public indictment and backlash against the United States for bringing that piece of shit to justice discredits the ICC. It can’t be an organization where it applies universal human rights declarations only when Israel is involved. That’s stupid and that’s exactly why the organization is a failure.

also article you link: "It is unclear if Baud is a resident of Switzerland."

so not sure why he should be returning to switzerland

IMHO it's obvious that there should be a limited minimum/basic account provided by the state unconditionally, and that the current practice of using AML regulations to effectively ban people from having bank cards and bank accounts goes against the spirit of due process.

it's quite farcical that private banks are used as mandatory designated sin-eaters (scapegoats) for this. they don't want to and mostly can't comment on the specifics (because SAR - suspicious activity reporting - and the various national equivalents, usually immediately triggers the requirement to play dumb, since that's the only way to ensure that the bank cannot be later dragged in front of whatever authority for not cooperating with the investigation) but everyone knows it, since it's in the fucking news.

and the actual legal actions tend to be overturned.

all of which in total end up helping these organizations (and these politicians) to farm reputation.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/various/entry-ban-for-austrian-...

Replying to your edit: this is not a discussion about whether debanking or state control of the financial system is good or bad in general. I don't have a much opinion on such a complex topic (though I do hope that your principled opposition to state debanking also extends to muslims). What I replied to is your allegation of that he was debanked for his "opinions", which is categorically false. He was put on some sort of list, rightly or wrongly, because he had links with a far-right terrorist* who shot and killed dozens of people at a mosque. You omitting that fact and crying about authoritarianism when confronted leads me to think that you are not arguing in good faith.

*in the strictest definition of the word: openly subscribing (and self-describing) to far-right ideologies, and committing acts of terror

Are you really trying to point at some racist freak that advocates for ethnical cleansing via mass deportations as an example of debanking being bad?

Because you are actually convincing me of the opposite.

E.g. in Norway, BankAxept handles 80% of in-store card payments in Norway - essentially nearly all debit card payments, despite the fact most debit cards are also Visa cards. The Visa/Mastercard part typically only gets used outside of Norway.

BankAxept is also owned by the same group of banks that owns Vipps, and MobilePay that dominate the mobile payments market in Norway and Denmark as well, with smaller user bases in Sweden and Finland.

And many of these European payment providers (including Blik and Vipps/MobilePay) are moving towards being part of the European Payments Alliance to make these systems interoperable across Europe as well, which would take Visa and Mastercard out of a significantly larger proportion of European payments. Some of those cross border payments are already in place.

Chargeback is also one of the reasons why you pay (directly or indirectly) for Visa or Mastercard.

Sweden hasn't seen war in more than two hundred years, it's good to be reminded what to do just in case.

Democratic states need to constitutionally enshrine the right to banking, if they insist on being called democratic.

The cash register rejected about a third of the bills I had been keeping in my wallet, simply because they had become so battered from sitting there.

That's the state of cashless in Sweden today.

There is only one situation when the system faults. And that is when the customers phone is destroyed before updating the server. But these are just virtual pennies for small everyday purchases.