A shame that this took the threat of war to be taken seriously, rather than the reality of disenfranchisement faced by the elderly, immigrants, the homeless and the unbanked for whom cash remains a lifeline.
It is of great convenience to governments that digital payments require registered accounts on easily-tracked systems.
Just let people buy vegetables without becoming a cell in a Borgesian spreadsheet.
> the reality of disenfranchisement faced by the elderly, immigrants, the homeless and the unbanked for whom cash remains a lifeline
On the one hand the disenfranchisement is real. On the other hand many of these people are able to learn lots of new technologies if properly incentivized. It's generally an opt-out of society that's enabled by workarounds being available.
Should we forego on convenience because we have a bunch of naysayers?
Forget about cash, try living life in de Randstad area without a smartphone and half a dozen apps setup, configured and tuned for you life. It's definitely possible, but you will be living at a different level of velocity than if you have all the tools at your disposal.
The tax service here takes money laundering quite seriously so there's been a lot of regulation added for businesses handling cash, most affecting is probably the requirements of "certified tellers" that shot up the price for many smaller businesses (some even closing down or just switching to Swish).
Not entirely sure if those rules were relaxed, but the state and banks with higher cash handling fees did have a fair share in pushing cash out.
Sweden still feels very cashless in practice. My barber went back from swish to cash because of the charges for businesses but that is the only non-swish/non-card shopping I do these days and my haircut is literally the only thing I’ve paid cash for since well before covid. Even market stalls etc take swish. I never carry cash on me normally. It has made life much better. There is a small number - less in real life than on the comments on the internet to be honest - people lamenting the decline of cash but the vast vast majority completely don’t miss cash.
"An ongoing audit of the hairdressing industry that the Swedish Tax Agency is currently conducting shows that virtually all hairdressing companies audited by the authority are involved in some form of tax evasion [...] The most common tax avoidance discovered in the audits of around fifty hairdressing companies so far is undeclared income"
Any "central payment system"(like e.g. obsession with Paypal)
is a single-point-of-failure vulnerability. Cash is decentralized
and independent of any technology failing.
people find this the hard way during electric blackouts,
that credit cards are useless without electricity, but somehow
still think "electronic payment" is worth completely switching over.
So there's no electricity. But you were prepared, you have cash. You go to the shop to buy something with cash, and their cash register doesn't work, they can't record your purchase or calculate taxes, so you cannot buy anything anyway.
It is helping a little bit, but the benefits of this kind of preparedness are overstated.
This doesn't help that much because cash today is also useless without electricity. You can't go to a bank anymore to get cash from an actual person. The machines run on electricity.
In Germany we like to mimic things from other western countries a lot. Especially the nordics (including Sweden) and the US. Problem, we do this with a delay of 5-10 years. Right now we are in the transformation process of becoming cashless.. Like our role model Sweden. Hmm, something feels wrong.. :-)
This isn't the worst practice, however. Wait for the early adopters to test new ideas and implement the best ones. Maybe the cashless rollout in Germany might be curbed now.
Germany is also still waiting if 4G or Fibre internet to homes are a good thing... Or if the government should use the internet to make things easier for their citizens.
If that means businesses will accept a card without grumbling (or at all) I'm all for it. Feels strange to come from a supposedly less-developed country to Germany and having to pay cash.
It isn't mimicking as such, it's your federal government signing up to various international agreements on everything under the sun. The international agreement in question here is called "the Fourth Industrial Revolution", and you can bet they're all in on it. Just like they are with Digital ID, ID gated internet and so on.
Western governments have a tendency to try and change their publics rather than be changed by the public. They even have a name for it, "psychological nudging".
Imagine becoming a dissident in a totalitarian society where you can be cut off from all commercial transactions with the click of a button (i.e. cash has a broader purpose).
You don’t have to imagine; it has been done many times now against dissidents in the USA through the never before crossed lines of “debanking” in the partial digital currency American economy, the tyrannical cases of the EU sanctioning and effectively turning Jacques Baud and Hüseyin Doğru into 1984 style unpersons, the even more abusive and seemingly tyrants’ template in the targeting of Martin Sellner, where the EU has been targeting him personally across even non-member states in the most tyrannical way. And there are several other smaller, less prominent cases.
As you described, one click cut off from commercial transactions and in the cases of the EU sanctioning its own citizens where even helping them feed themselves or their children is an illegal act.
And most people are totally oblivious to most of these massive shifts in the fundamental assumptions of democratic society, and may even support the tyranny they presumably must believe will never be turned on them, even though no one knows more what a loathsome person a traitor is than those who the traitor has served in his betrayal.
Funny thing is, a good way of making someone hover their finger over that button is to try to deposit any significant amount of cash to your bank account. One part of the system says "Use cash!", another part says "What is this cash? How did you get it? From whom? Did you give them a receipt? Can you prove that?"
If "the electronics" break down, shops usually can't accept any form of payment at all, because that would be illegal with their on-line cash registers being offline...
But if we are going to view the government as the enemy in this context and thus cash is a way to avoid “control” it also follows that the same are espousing avoidance of paying taxes and the control government and taxes have over you as well.
It’s interesting to see folks talking about the “disadvantaged” such as immigrants (presumably illegal because legal immigrants have varying levels of bank access) who of course deserve to use cash as a moral imperative against the totalitarian government but then if someone says well I disagree with and don’t want to pay taxes (give me cash) because of that same anti-totalitarian point of view they’d be labeled all sorts of negative things like being a non-contributor or something similar.
We have to align on consistent moral claims. If you want to argue well so and so is part of the totalitarian government apparatus then all you are doing is creating an “other” who uses cash to avoid “totalitarianism” and in which case the so-called “totalitarian” apparatus is justified in its hostility toward entities which seek to destroy it.
I was debanked about 26 years ago. I had one too many issues with returned bad checks, and a report was filed with an agency called ChexSystems. For years afterwards, I was prohibited from holding a legitimate checking account anywhere in the US.
Col. Jacques Baud is living it right now. He's been cut off from his pension and bank accounts completely in Belgium and is prohibited from crossing borders.
It is happening in the EU right now. Martin Sellner has denied or closed by 109 banks for his opinion that Europe should stay European.
Prophecy: some people here may argue that's a good thing, and we should differentiate between a good and bad debanking.
Edit: as expected, if you want to push for more autocracy and control, you need to find the right bogeyman. And suddenly, people claiming they are liberal and pro freedom will start supporting authoritarian policies, but "just in some cases", whether those people are terrorists, "far rights" or paedophiles.
How have we even arrived to a point where all payments go through Visa/Mastercard duopoly and to pay people hectically unlock, reconnect, and reinstall stuff on their smartphones?
Cashless society in Sweden is very much built around a Swish, a local service that I don't think has much to do with Visa/Mastercard as it communicates directly with your bank.
Most EU countries have widely used alternatives. In Poland you can pay with Blik in basically every card terminal and use it intead of your card at ATM, and for online payments it serves 70% of transactions.
And before Blik most people used online direct transfers for online payments, not cards anyway. It is funny how the leapfrogging works.
The only reason I need a debit card is paying subscription to American companies. I really wish they integrated better.
The headline is preposterous. The article itself says less than 5 percent people used cash last year compared to 10% 2023. How is that abandoning its cashless society? The only thing is the government asking people to have roughly a $100 worth of cash at home for emergencies like total blackouts.
Yup, its nonsense, nobody to very few is going back to cash but may keep some cash at home as recommended. I've actually had $100 in my wallet for 3 years that I haven't used because I never pay with cash, sold a table to an american couple and they didn't have Swish.
Quote from article: 'It all changed when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Realising that reliance on an electronic payment system left Sweden vulnerable to blackouts or sabotage, the Riksbank – Sweden's central bank – urged civilians to keep 1,000 Swedish kronor (£80) per adult at home. The government issued a brochure entitled "If Crisis or War Comes" to every household, advising Swedes to use cash regularly to "strengthen preparedness".'
Netherlands recommends 70 euro per adult and 30 euro per child. There's probably some coordination going on between countries that they all land on roughly the same ammount of money.
They co-ordinate most things now, rightly or wrongly.
Either way these are small change, and thanks to the slow but persistent reduction, many places refuse to accept cash and/or don't even have the facilities to deal with it!
You should have cash in a drawer somewhere just in case you lose your card / wallet / phone. A lot of people talk about totalitarian societies and being cut off from payment at a click of a switch, but the reality is more mundane.
Cash is a good backup and is easy to give to someone else e.g. I recently moved house and my brother was driving my car (while I drove the moving van). I left £60 in cash in the cubby box, so he could refill. No need to mess around with apps/bank transfers, just leave the notes/coins in the compartment.
Being cut off from payment at a click of a switch is already happening. I can name at least 3 people off the top of my head that have been de-banked in western countries (USA, UK, Italy) simply for speaking out in favour of the "wrong" cause.
Democratic states need to constitutionally enshrine the right to banking, if they insist on being called democratic.
I used to pay attention to politics and freedom of speech issues etc. While there is a problem with democratic societies (any society really) curtailing freedom of speech. That often isn't what is happening with "debanking". Often banks have to apply different rules/laws to people that are politically exposed and/or these people are doing something shady etc.
I wouldn't believe any of the poltical grifters (left/right/whateveR) online when they said they are debanked/cancelled unless they show definitive proof that is what happened.
It seems melodramatic right until Russia blows up your bank's data center, and their digital payment system goes down for days or weeks just as you're out buying groceries.
I think China is cashless society but not relying on internet servers. Beggars and street vendor have printed-out QR-code and no phone. You scan the code with Alipay-app and show the confirmation screen to the seller. This is not a real-time transaction. It is executed when the server is available.
Youtube-girl Qingyunji bought some water on remote mountain road using QR-on-cardboard and this is what I assume happened.
Interesting because I have read that Germans traveling to Ukraine are amazed at how cashless daily life is even close to the front lines. Now Germany is a famously cash-centric society, so I am not sure what to make of that comparison.
Nevertheless it is certainly a good idea to think about fallbacks tho.
Ukraine's admin life is extremely well digitized, moreso than most developed countries. You can do pretty much anything with the Dia app. Most amazingly it's a very recent development
Funny that Sweden abandoned its 200-year neutrality and joined NATO in the name of security and yet security situation for Sweden has only deteriorated since then. Shows how short sighted and brainwashed Swedish politicians are.
To the extent the security situation has deteriorated, it has deteriorated because of a continuation of the same situation that made them join NATO. They'd not be in any better position without it.
Sweden had no problem remaining neutral through all the previous wars involving both sides, including those fought in Europe. This conflict is no different, yet for reasons that remain unclear, Sweden has chosen to make a dramatic departure from its longstanding policy of neutrality. Whether this turns out to have been a gigantic strategic blunder or the result of NATO pressure that Sweden simply couldn’t withstand remains to be seen.
The notion that Putin would care about neutrality is comically naive.
EDIT: crazybonkersai: Your comment below has been flagged (not by me), so I'll reply here: At no point have I suggested there is nothing strategic about Putins decisions - that is entirely a strawman. That does not mean there isn't reason for neighbours to be concerned for their safety. A full scale invasion of Finland or Sweden would've been unlikely even without NATO membership (not least given how Finland did last time), but Russia has an extensive and recent history of testing and probing the readiness of their neighbours, and not being concerned about infringing on their sovereignty if they believe it serves their other interests. The more likely scenario affecting Finland and Sweden would be if Putin decided he wanted to attempt going into the Baltic states, and saw a need to impose control over the Baltic Sea as part of the process.
A shame that this took the threat of war to be taken seriously, rather than the reality of disenfranchisement faced by the elderly, immigrants, the homeless and the unbanked for whom cash remains a lifeline.
It is of great convenience to governments that digital payments require registered accounts on easily-tracked systems.
Just let people buy vegetables without becoming a cell in a Borgesian spreadsheet.
> the reality of disenfranchisement faced by the elderly, immigrants, the homeless and the unbanked for whom cash remains a lifeline
On the one hand the disenfranchisement is real. On the other hand many of these people are able to learn lots of new technologies if properly incentivized. It's generally an opt-out of society that's enabled by workarounds being available.
Should we forego on convenience because we have a bunch of naysayers?
Forget about cash, try living life in de Randstad area without a smartphone and half a dozen apps setup, configured and tuned for you life. It's definitely possible, but you will be living at a different level of velocity than if you have all the tools at your disposal.
The tax service here takes money laundering quite seriously so there's been a lot of regulation added for businesses handling cash, most affecting is probably the requirements of "certified tellers" that shot up the price for many smaller businesses (some even closing down or just switching to Swish).
Not entirely sure if those rules were relaxed, but the state and banks with higher cash handling fees did have a fair share in pushing cash out.
Still cashless in practice, and largely has been for 20+ years so its not a surprise for the elderly.
Sweden still feels very cashless in practice. My barber went back from swish to cash because of the charges for businesses but that is the only non-swish/non-card shopping I do these days and my haircut is literally the only thing I’ve paid cash for since well before covid. Even market stalls etc take swish. I never carry cash on me normally. It has made life much better. There is a small number - less in real life than on the comments on the internet to be honest - people lamenting the decline of cash but the vast vast majority completely don’t miss cash.
> My barber went back from swish to cash because of the charges for businesses
A little too trusting believing that, no? Hairdressers are famous for cheating on their taxes, and cash is an excellent way to do it.
https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/hairdressers-evading-ta...
"An ongoing audit of the hairdressing industry that the Swedish Tax Agency is currently conducting shows that virtually all hairdressing companies audited by the authority are involved in some form of tax evasion [...] The most common tax avoidance discovered in the audits of around fifty hairdressing companies so far is undeclared income"
Not Swedish, but where I live I only carry cash on me because the place where I speed wash my car only takes cash (probably for tax avoidance).
I don't miss cash at all, and in many ways I will be happy if I never have to carry it on me again.
Any "central payment system"(like e.g. obsession with Paypal) is a single-point-of-failure vulnerability. Cash is decentralized and independent of any technology failing. people find this the hard way during electric blackouts, that credit cards are useless without electricity, but somehow still think "electronic payment" is worth completely switching over.
I think it is important to distinguish between major credit cards banks (visa, MasterCard etc.) and payment method like GiroPay, EFTPOS , Wero, etc.
So there's no electricity. But you were prepared, you have cash. You go to the shop to buy something with cash, and their cash register doesn't work, they can't record your purchase or calculate taxes, so you cannot buy anything anyway.
It is helping a little bit, but the benefits of this kind of preparedness are overstated.
This doesn't help that much because cash today is also useless without electricity. You can't go to a bank anymore to get cash from an actual person. The machines run on electricity.
In Germany we like to mimic things from other western countries a lot. Especially the nordics (including Sweden) and the US. Problem, we do this with a delay of 5-10 years. Right now we are in the transformation process of becoming cashless.. Like our role model Sweden. Hmm, something feels wrong.. :-)
This isn't the worst practice, however. Wait for the early adopters to test new ideas and implement the best ones. Maybe the cashless rollout in Germany might be curbed now.
Germany is also still waiting if 4G or Fibre internet to homes are a good thing... Or if the government should use the internet to make things easier for their citizens.
If that means businesses will accept a card without grumbling (or at all) I'm all for it. Feels strange to come from a supposedly less-developed country to Germany and having to pay cash.
It isn't mimicking as such, it's your federal government signing up to various international agreements on everything under the sun. The international agreement in question here is called "the Fourth Industrial Revolution", and you can bet they're all in on it. Just like they are with Digital ID, ID gated internet and so on.
Western governments have a tendency to try and change their publics rather than be changed by the public. They even have a name for it, "psychological nudging".
I read it and I knew it was going to be Russia.
Imagine becoming a dissident in a totalitarian society where you can be cut off from all commercial transactions with the click of a button (i.e. cash has a broader purpose).
You don’t have to imagine; it has been done many times now against dissidents in the USA through the never before crossed lines of “debanking” in the partial digital currency American economy, the tyrannical cases of the EU sanctioning and effectively turning Jacques Baud and Hüseyin Doğru into 1984 style unpersons, the even more abusive and seemingly tyrants’ template in the targeting of Martin Sellner, where the EU has been targeting him personally across even non-member states in the most tyrannical way. And there are several other smaller, less prominent cases.
As you described, one click cut off from commercial transactions and in the cases of the EU sanctioning its own citizens where even helping them feed themselves or their children is an illegal act.
And most people are totally oblivious to most of these massive shifts in the fundamental assumptions of democratic society, and may even support the tyranny they presumably must believe will never be turned on them, even though no one knows more what a loathsome person a traitor is than those who the traitor has served in his betrayal.
Isn't that what happened with International Criminal Court judge who dared to oppose Israel?
Funny thing is, a good way of making someone hover their finger over that button is to try to deposit any significant amount of cash to your bank account. One part of the system says "Use cash!", another part says "What is this cash? How did you get it? From whom? Did you give them a receipt? Can you prove that?"
If "the electronics" break down, shops usually can't accept any form of payment at all, because that would be illegal with their on-line cash registers being offline...
Right like in China.
But if we are going to view the government as the enemy in this context and thus cash is a way to avoid “control” it also follows that the same are espousing avoidance of paying taxes and the control government and taxes have over you as well.
It’s interesting to see folks talking about the “disadvantaged” such as immigrants (presumably illegal because legal immigrants have varying levels of bank access) who of course deserve to use cash as a moral imperative against the totalitarian government but then if someone says well I disagree with and don’t want to pay taxes (give me cash) because of that same anti-totalitarian point of view they’d be labeled all sorts of negative things like being a non-contributor or something similar.
We have to align on consistent moral claims. If you want to argue well so and so is part of the totalitarian government apparatus then all you are doing is creating an “other” who uses cash to avoid “totalitarianism” and in which case the so-called “totalitarian” apparatus is justified in its hostility toward entities which seek to destroy it.
I was debanked about 26 years ago. I had one too many issues with returned bad checks, and a report was filed with an agency called ChexSystems. For years afterwards, I was prohibited from holding a legitimate checking account anywhere in the US.
That's already a reality in china.
You don't have to imagine it.
Col. Jacques Baud is living it right now. He's been cut off from his pension and bank accounts completely in Belgium and is prohibited from crossing borders.
So he can't even return to Switzerland.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/former-swiss-in...
yup, like what they did in Canada when you supported someone gov doesn't like
NYT: https://archive.ph/pkJYp
It is happening in the EU right now. Martin Sellner has denied or closed by 109 banks for his opinion that Europe should stay European.
Prophecy: some people here may argue that's a good thing, and we should differentiate between a good and bad debanking.
Edit: as expected, if you want to push for more autocracy and control, you need to find the right bogeyman. And suddenly, people claiming they are liberal and pro freedom will start supporting authoritarian policies, but "just in some cases", whether those people are terrorists, "far rights" or paedophiles.
Only barter is viable during wartime.
How have we even arrived to a point where all payments go through Visa/Mastercard duopoly and to pay people hectically unlock, reconnect, and reinstall stuff on their smartphones?
Cashless society in Sweden is very much built around a Swish, a local service that I don't think has much to do with Visa/Mastercard as it communicates directly with your bank.
Sweden specifically has Swish, though.
Brazil has Pix. Though if Bolsonaro wins the election he'll sell the financial system to the US, even though Brazilians love Pix.
These are not fringe payment systems, either. They're really big where they are.
EU is working on something similar, and I think it's launched in a couple of countries.
Because dealing with cash sucks for both businesses and clients.
Most EU countries have widely used alternatives. In Poland you can pay with Blik in basically every card terminal and use it intead of your card at ATM, and for online payments it serves 70% of transactions.
And before Blik most people used online direct transfers for online payments, not cards anyway. It is funny how the leapfrogging works.
The only reason I need a debit card is paying subscription to American companies. I really wish they integrated better.
The headline is preposterous. The article itself says less than 5 percent people used cash last year compared to 10% 2023. How is that abandoning its cashless society? The only thing is the government asking people to have roughly a $100 worth of cash at home for emergencies like total blackouts.
Yup, its nonsense, nobody to very few is going back to cash but may keep some cash at home as recommended. I've actually had $100 in my wallet for 3 years that I haven't used because I never pay with cash, sold a table to an american couple and they didn't have Swish.
Quote from article: 'It all changed when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Realising that reliance on an electronic payment system left Sweden vulnerable to blackouts or sabotage, the Riksbank – Sweden's central bank – urged civilians to keep 1,000 Swedish kronor (£80) per adult at home. The government issued a brochure entitled "If Crisis or War Comes" to every household, advising Swedes to use cash regularly to "strengthen preparedness".'
there's a level of "naiveté" that's borderline criminal to have been moving on with the previous plan without considering a war could be possible
For the curious, you can download the English version here: https://www.mcf.se/sv/publikationer/om-krisen-eller-kriget-k...
Denmark has the same suggestion from the Government, although I can't remember if the amount is the same or less (also considering exchange rate)
Netherlands recommends 70 euro per adult and 30 euro per child. There's probably some coordination going on between countries that they all land on roughly the same ammount of money.
They co-ordinate most things now, rightly or wrongly.
Either way these are small change, and thanks to the slow but persistent reduction, many places refuse to accept cash and/or don't even have the facilities to deal with it!
A blessing in disguise.
You should have cash in a drawer somewhere just in case you lose your card / wallet / phone. A lot of people talk about totalitarian societies and being cut off from payment at a click of a switch, but the reality is more mundane.
Cash is a good backup and is easy to give to someone else e.g. I recently moved house and my brother was driving my car (while I drove the moving van). I left £60 in cash in the cubby box, so he could refill. No need to mess around with apps/bank transfers, just leave the notes/coins in the compartment.
Being cut off from payment at a click of a switch is already happening. I can name at least 3 people off the top of my head that have been de-banked in western countries (USA, UK, Italy) simply for speaking out in favour of the "wrong" cause.
Democratic states need to constitutionally enshrine the right to banking, if they insist on being called democratic.
I used to pay attention to politics and freedom of speech issues etc. While there is a problem with democratic societies (any society really) curtailing freedom of speech. That often isn't what is happening with "debanking". Often banks have to apply different rules/laws to people that are politically exposed and/or these people are doing something shady etc.
I wouldn't believe any of the poltical grifters (left/right/whateveR) online when they said they are debanked/cancelled unless they show definitive proof that is what happened.
Very melodramatic.
It seems melodramatic right until Russia blows up your bank's data center, and their digital payment system goes down for days or weeks just as you're out buying groceries.
I think China is cashless society but not relying on internet servers. Beggars and street vendor have printed-out QR-code and no phone. You scan the code with Alipay-app and show the confirmation screen to the seller. This is not a real-time transaction. It is executed when the server is available.
Youtube-girl Qingyunji bought some water on remote mountain road using QR-on-cardboard and this is what I assume happened.
Interesting because I have read that Germans traveling to Ukraine are amazed at how cashless daily life is even close to the front lines. Now Germany is a famously cash-centric society, so I am not sure what to make of that comparison.
Nevertheless it is certainly a good idea to think about fallbacks tho.
Ukraine's admin life is extremely well digitized, moreso than most developed countries. You can do pretty much anything with the Dia app. Most amazingly it's a very recent development
Funny that Sweden abandoned its 200-year neutrality and joined NATO in the name of security and yet security situation for Sweden has only deteriorated since then. Shows how short sighted and brainwashed Swedish politicians are.
To the extent the security situation has deteriorated, it has deteriorated because of a continuation of the same situation that made them join NATO. They'd not be in any better position without it.
Sweden had no problem remaining neutral through all the previous wars involving both sides, including those fought in Europe. This conflict is no different, yet for reasons that remain unclear, Sweden has chosen to make a dramatic departure from its longstanding policy of neutrality. Whether this turns out to have been a gigantic strategic blunder or the result of NATO pressure that Sweden simply couldn’t withstand remains to be seen.
The notion that Putin would care about neutrality is comically naive.
EDIT: crazybonkersai: Your comment below has been flagged (not by me), so I'll reply here: At no point have I suggested there is nothing strategic about Putins decisions - that is entirely a strawman. That does not mean there isn't reason for neighbours to be concerned for their safety. A full scale invasion of Finland or Sweden would've been unlikely even without NATO membership (not least given how Finland did last time), but Russia has an extensive and recent history of testing and probing the readiness of their neighbours, and not being concerned about infringing on their sovereignty if they believe it serves their other interests. The more likely scenario affecting Finland and Sweden would be if Putin decided he wanted to attempt going into the Baltic states, and saw a need to impose control over the Baltic Sea as part of the process.
[dead]