[Chrono]

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.

[tjoff]

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).

[martinkallstrom]

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.

[lflux]

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.

[Chrono]

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.

[kristiandupont]

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?

[mjwalshe]

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,

[hackermom]

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.

[mjwalshe]

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.

[jrockway]

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.

[Chrono]

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.

[icebraining]

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.