Looking at what China is doing is gonna give them more ammunition. I used to love digital payment but I'm getting increasingly wary of it.
Look what big private companies did with our data, what will happen when they have all your purchase history and when your daily life depends on them approving your transactions? It's too much power. Look at the many horror stories of people getting their money locked out in Paypal.
If the majority of payements are done via mobile (like in China), getting locked out of it arbitrarly via some random fraud detection algorithm means becoming a second class citizen. Try getting around without it in China, it's a pain in the butt
The cash is not placed with the mobile payment provider. Your bank card(s) are linked. Making a mobile payment prompts you enter the password setup for bank-to-mobile payment.
You can pre-deposit money onto you mobile wallet. The same prompt pops-up, but with your mobile avatar instead of the bank logo. That's the UX done simply. Personally, I keep an air-gap of sorts, linking mobile payment to an account I know only has 2000 Yuan or less on it.
There are several methods of payment, most that I don't like, in terms of information being spread.
You can 'scan them'. There's a static QR code printed and laminated, that gets scanned. Funds a transferred.
There are a few plays on this where a static QR code from a 3rd party provider has a click-through app to gather identity information. You pay the same price, they learn a little about your payment size and time-of-day.
For larger companies, they scan you. This is far more worrying for me. You present your phone's wallet barcode/QR combo (dynamically generated for each time it's opened, one-use) and the store scan that to withdraw funds. Their transactions solutions provider is now matching one's purchases against one's identity. Same is true of Didi (China's Uber). A complete identity is build.
A similar option to the above is restaurants. Each table has an individual QR code to scan. Sit down, scan, read the menu, select what you want, the food is served to your table a few minutes later. That's not a restaurant experience for me, with waiting staff simply being a dish carrier.
So I pay with cash. Anywhere other than mass-information-harvesters are happy to take it still, and the prices are the same.
I feel the fake Uber v Didi taxi war where only mobile payment was acceptable was a big, and orchestrated [read: funded] play by mobile payment providers (fare discounts could reach 50%+ vs taxi) to ensure critical momentum.
Agreed. Living in SH, you get tied to the convenience of Wechat. I had a few hour issue with an update to my phone and I realized the vulnerability is enormous. Your entire adult network and ability to function is lost without it and its links to everything.
The interesting component to this is what happens when the payment system $hits the bed.
3 weeks ago last friday and saturday in sydney the communications system underlying about 50% of all financial transactions (taxi card readers, many ATMs, many businesses) collapsed with the result that if you didn't have cash you couldn't make an exchange.
How robust do people really think these systems are? I certainly have no faith in a perfectly digital future (despite being heavily invested in it) - we are but one solar flare away from behaving like barbarians.
Continuing to use cash should be a national security issue, just like for instance, using open source software is starting to be in some places. Any country that wants to get rid of cash is just making it easy for future rival nations to cripple its economy with a hack or two.
Happens in Norway as well some times, but then it automatically switches to a backup system, meaning it just checks that the card is valid and asks for a signature. Then the transactions goes through in bulk when the system is back up. Takes a little bit longer, but it works.
Definitely a concern, but some of the payment methods are independent. Most payments in Sweden are done by card. If that system is down, it should not affect Swish, which is the second most popular way of making payments.
A larger Internet outage is a concerning scenario though.
In Belgium the payment processor crashes every year around X-mas. Can't use your card in the shop doing X-mas shopping, no cash from the ATM. Fun times and every year in the news :)
I think the systems are pretty robust by any measure. I've never had a card reader in the Netherlands fail and had to pay with cash before. I have seen ATM's out of order a couple of times though.
If the payment networks all go down, I imagine you'd also have trouble withdrawing cash from an ATM too. What's the alternative? Cash under your mattress for a rainy day? Do you think the value of cash would be stable enough to be useful in this solar flare scenario? I think we'll have bigger issues...
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!
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 :)
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...).
I would be willing to bet that once a country goes cash-free that a second underground hard currency of some type will develop. Being able to barter/exchange without being tracked, or without being in the "system" has too many upsides for it not to exist. Maybe bottle caps? :-)
Or the lack of care once you get a small peak at who they sell all your information to, followed by a slap on the wrist because too big to fail now that society is fully dependent on it. Equifax anyone?
But it happens from time to time and all transactions still goes through with signature. Usually it’s a problem local to the shop, but it’s the same when bankaxept goes down. Everything just takes a bit longer.
Ditto in Finland. I can imagine the Internet being largely 4G-based in the northern parts of Norway too? Luckily, most people born before 1990 still remember the basics of living in a society that isn't completely reliant on the Internet. :)
Anecdotally, I don't know of any Swedish consumers saying "not so fast!". Even the pensioners I know do their parking with the kommun's parking app and love swish etc.
Myself, I last used a banknote... at least over a year ago. I think I did use some coins (which luckily I still had in the glovebox of my car) in an old-fashioned parking machine recently.
Does anyone understand why cash is so common in Germany (or why cards are so rarely accepted)? I didn't expect it from a modern first world European country.
Cashless is an utopia, pushed by disconnected from reality liberal arts academics and humanities majors. Sweden is famous for having way too many of those victims of Plato virus.
Cash is a major innovation in evolution of societies and not for some weak-minded progress-cosplaying idiots to abolish it in order to be popular an re-elected.
Let them visit some overpopulated asian country to see why cash is absolutely essential.
Also look no farther than bitcoin - anything which disrupts or even increase transaction time will be a disaster.
I see a lot of people worry about "what if the connectivity breaks," but truth be told, I had a lot more fuzz with physical money than digital. I put away a small sum as a contingency for exactly this scenario that I never used, and in fact, I had to go change that money to new bills because they became outdated. It's the same for my spare change; all the coins I accumulated over the years are now invalid. This could be seen as the physical equivalent of connectivity problems, and as far as I can tell, it happens a lot more frequently.
[+] [-] EZ-E|7 years ago|reply
Look what big private companies did with our data, what will happen when they have all your purchase history and when your daily life depends on them approving your transactions? It's too much power. Look at the many horror stories of people getting their money locked out in Paypal.
If the majority of payements are done via mobile (like in China), getting locked out of it arbitrarly via some random fraud detection algorithm means becoming a second class citizen. Try getting around without it in China, it's a pain in the butt
[+] [-] zhte415|7 years ago|reply
Some caveat:
The cash is not placed with the mobile payment provider. Your bank card(s) are linked. Making a mobile payment prompts you enter the password setup for bank-to-mobile payment.
You can pre-deposit money onto you mobile wallet. The same prompt pops-up, but with your mobile avatar instead of the bank logo. That's the UX done simply. Personally, I keep an air-gap of sorts, linking mobile payment to an account I know only has 2000 Yuan or less on it.
There are several methods of payment, most that I don't like, in terms of information being spread.
You can 'scan them'. There's a static QR code printed and laminated, that gets scanned. Funds a transferred.
There are a few plays on this where a static QR code from a 3rd party provider has a click-through app to gather identity information. You pay the same price, they learn a little about your payment size and time-of-day.
For larger companies, they scan you. This is far more worrying for me. You present your phone's wallet barcode/QR combo (dynamically generated for each time it's opened, one-use) and the store scan that to withdraw funds. Their transactions solutions provider is now matching one's purchases against one's identity. Same is true of Didi (China's Uber). A complete identity is build.
A similar option to the above is restaurants. Each table has an individual QR code to scan. Sit down, scan, read the menu, select what you want, the food is served to your table a few minutes later. That's not a restaurant experience for me, with waiting staff simply being a dish carrier.
So I pay with cash. Anywhere other than mass-information-harvesters are happy to take it still, and the prices are the same.
I feel the fake Uber v Didi taxi war where only mobile payment was acceptable was a big, and orchestrated [read: funded] play by mobile payment providers (fare discounts could reach 50%+ vs taxi) to ensure critical momentum.
[+] [-] vfulco2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mashimo|7 years ago|reply
But if the bank locks me out of my account I also can't get cash, even if I could buy stuff with it.
[+] [-] Svoka|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbiep|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Thlom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ACS_Solver|7 years ago|reply
A larger Internet outage is a concerning scenario though.
[+] [-] toadi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Numberwang|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] davedx|7 years ago|reply
If the payment networks all go down, I imagine you'd also have trouble withdrawing cash from an ATM too. What's the alternative? Cash under your mattress for a rainy day? Do you think the value of cash would be stable enough to be useful in this solar flare scenario? I think we'll have bigger issues...
[+] [-] Orphis|7 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] zbrox|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voltagex_|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mijamo|7 years ago|reply
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...).
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miohtama|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jeffrallen|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomhoward|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtougas|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HappySweeney|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] upofadown|7 years ago|reply
* https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/tal/engelska/ingv...
... which is kind of odd...
[+] [-] simonblack|7 years ago|reply
What happened in Puerto Rico and in New Orleans?
No electricity = no money.
[+] [-] ginko|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fwsgonzo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Thlom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahje|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SirLJ|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mariefred|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dan_hawkins|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willvarfar|7 years ago|reply
Myself, I last used a banknote... at least over a year ago. I think I did use some coins (which luckily I still had in the glovebox of my car) in an old-fashioned parking machine recently.
[+] [-] kungtotte|7 years ago|reply
I use cash nearly every day and I see plenty of transactions in cash around me. It's still alive and well.
Do you live in a city?
[+] [-] nextstep|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xfitm3|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crummy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dest|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway487548|7 years ago|reply
Cash is a major innovation in evolution of societies and not for some weak-minded progress-cosplaying idiots to abolish it in order to be popular an re-elected.
Let them visit some overpopulated asian country to see why cash is absolutely essential.
Also look no farther than bitcoin - anything which disrupts or even increase transaction time will be a disaster.
[+] [-] toxik|7 years ago|reply