Some context might be useful here. I spent some time living Sweden not too long ago and Swedes practically don't use cash. It's usually not said out loud, but cash is often considered to be dirty and criminal, to the point that most don't have any at all. Digital payments are very convenient and deeply integrated, so long as you have a local ID which allows you use the local payment system Swish etc.
This worked nicely until the tensions in Europe lead to more cyberattacks rolling in and suddenly you have people not being able to buy food, medicine, and so forth. Not too long after, there was a government advisory urging people to keep some cash reserves in case a larger cyberattack happens, but cultural habits at large are hard to change. This is of course a coarse simplification of the context, but might help understand this incentive a bit better.
> "It's usually not said out loud, but cash is often considered to be dirty and criminal ..."
Are you sure this isn't impression you've gotten from isolated reactions involving a small number of individuals, perhaps just a single individual? I can't relate to the sentiment at all, having lived here for just over three decades and experiencing the popularity shift from cash to debit card. I can, in fact, not recall a single time ever that someone has divulged the opinion that they consider cash "dirty and criminal".
More than anything else the Swede's favor of debit card is the convenience. Second to that I would say is the security of not immediately losing funds if you misplace the card or it being stolen - it feels less risky carrying a debit card, in particular if you're the type who prefers having more than a few "tens" on you in case you'd need or want to buy something.
I'm Swedish and if someone insists on doing a transaction using cash when Swish or card is available, I'd immediately start to wonder if it's for some kind of more or less shady reason, probably tax evasion at the very least.
You have to differentiate common purchases from "large" purchases in this discussion. I'm certain you don't think there's something shady going on, or tax evasion happening, if someone uses cash in the grocery store or at Pressbyrån, or to pay for some little gadget or whatever at Kjell&Co.
This is what people think of when someone "uses cash". Not hauling tens of thousands to buy a used car or to settle the bill for having your bathroom tiled, which would be cases I too would raise an eyebrow over.
I think they're talking about when merchants insist that you give them cash ("cash only"), not when buyers insist on giving cash. The usual assumption is that if e.g. a street-food cart is cash-only, it's not because they can't accept cards (it's rather trivial nowadays) but rather that 1. they don't want to pay the interchange fees, and more importantly, 2. they want to be able to cook their books when reporting revenue.
There are businesses that attract people that use cards fraudulently and the business gets flagged demand eventually dropped. Gas stations in less desirable neighborhoods in the US have this issue and some only take cash.
Credit card fraud is not nearly as common in Europe as it is in the US.
Additionally, and specifically in Sweden, the fees that banks charge businesses for handling cash (picking it up and depositing it at the end of each business day) have increased significantly in the last decade or two. This has been a significant factor in driving businesses away from cash - it's just expensive for them to deal with.
Definitely cultural: Italy has a big tradition of merchants evading taxes, and there have been multiple steps over the year to mandate card payments cause those imply the merchant will pay taxes.
So if you are a law abiding citizen you can easily be pissed off that you get to pay taxes and they don't.
For a few years "we don't take card" was widely interpreted as a strong indicator the merchant would evade taxes, and "I won't go there anymore" was a common reaction from some people. These days it's technically illegal and yet you will still find _some_ shops that only want cash.
A cheaper alternative to cards here is app payment via Swish (approximately like Venmo). Goes straight to the vendor's bank account at a flat rate of the equivalent of USD ~$0.15 per transaction.
That used to be semi-common for smaller transactions in Sweden but was made illegal. Not sure why, probably to fight tax avoidance.
At this point the cost of handling cash is way higher than handling cards and as no one in Sweden ever uses cash its no longer relevant at all anyway. Now many (maybe even most?) dont accept cash to avoid the cost of handling cash instead.
No, it really doesn't, besides the fixed investment of buying a cash register. The idea of being forced to hand over a percentage of all my earnings to private company is abominable. I pay taxes to the elected government, not to some bank. It's why I only accept checks, ACH transfers or cash as payment, and it saves me 3% of my income a year over taking credit cards.
In the EU fees are capped at around 0.3 % I believe.
And you're mistaken if you think cash is cheaper for most stores. You risk theft (so need to pay for measures against that), you have straight losses from mistakes, have to spend time handling and counting cash, spend time depositing, spend time buying change, etc etc
I’m pretty sure there are fees involved with running a cash register, aren’t there? At least in Sweden, the machine has to be certified, registers with the tax authority and then inspected for re-certification regularly.
Regarding cash, does your bank not charge a fee for depositing cash?
What do you think happens to the cash at the end of the day?
Managing cash has costs too, they're just harder to quantify: you have to ferry it to a bank, you have increased risk of theft, fraud, and robberies, you need extra time to actually check the register etc.
And then you risk losing business if you don't offer card payments because it's just more convenient for most customers (you may like wise lose some if you don't take cash, but that's a vanishing market).
One big difference is that there's competition between cash handling providers, while there's essentially zero wiggle room for interchange fees.
That's what makes interchange and network fees so much more problematic than acquiring fees. There's very healthy competition between credit card acquirers and payment service providers on both features and price, but in the end, you have to accept whatever card your customer has or there won't be a transaction.
In the EU the authorities have recognized the power of the card networks and introduced price controls on interchange fees in 2015, capping them at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards.
Note that Europe passed a law that limits interchange fees to something very low by US standards, like $0.20 or 0.05%, so it's not a reasonable excuse.
(The fact that credit card networks continue doing business in Europe proves they're still profitable and the US is getting ripped off by these fees)
Yeah there's that cash only bar in central Stockholm that's cash only. Everyone just "knows" they launder money there. I forget the name of the bar, it's on a barge near Tantolunden. it's the shadiest place I know where you can't barely find any shade!
FWIW I am Australian and we have a similar adoption rate of cashless payments.
If a merchant tries to promote cash options I immediately think they’re doing it for tax evasion reasons - not because of the touted reason that “card payments cost more to process” (they don’t once you factor in the cost of handling cash).
People forget that the credit card companies charge businesses to process transactions. Some stores/restaurants even give discounts for paying in cash because of this.
In my country if you pay with credit card at a grocery store (or anywhere) you get 3.5% tacked on to your bill. Merchants don't eat the cost, and don't hide it in the listed price of goods; it's explicitly passed on.
This is explicitly forbidden by almost all card processing networks (and by the government, in many countries). If you report a business who is doing this to the card processor, they'll likely get their card processing privileges suspended.
On the other hand, cash has its costs. You need to have a register, more training, more insurance, processing of cash at the bank, having it deposit cash at the end of every day, etc.
With credit cards you pay a fee, but you don't have to deal with all of those other things that people often don't consider.
If a significant amount of your business is cash based then the risk is much higher. If you're doing $100 worth of cash transactions per day then your registers and safe probably don't have much and you can probably get away with weekly or even monthly deposits. Whereas if you're dealing with $1000s in cash then you probably want to deposit daily, need a lot more security around your register and safe, and probably have a much higher quality safe too.
I've lived in Seattle for decades, and have -never- found a business that would not accept cash. If I -had- I would have set down my prospective purchase and walked out the door with a promise never to return.
Apart from a transit card (all the mass transit also takes cash ... no fee added), I'm not going to pay to feed the surveillance machine.
There have been a number of food trucks in the Seattle area that don't accept cash for the past 5 years. A popular food truck might have >$5k in cash sitting there by the end of the lunch rush - it puts an awfully tempting target on your back.
Where I live in Seattle, a lot of businesses simply don't handle cash at all, because break-ins for the cash register are quite expensive to deal with, and they circumvent that problem by simply posting outside the business that there is no cash.
One of the few businesses near me that must take cash, a dispensary, recently had an issue where somebody tried to break in using a stolen pickup truck to crash into the building. They didn't get the cash because they didn't get past the interior bollard system, but they did cause enough structural damage that the roof partially collapsed into the street.
I mean sure, US is special in this case, especially since you don't actually persecute small time thieves...
But i've paid with cash all over europe, and except for some vending machines, i've never been turned down, be it london, paris, berlin, belgrade or athens... from large supermarkets and museums, to local corner newsstands with a small fridge and cold drinks and local fast food joints. On the other hand, the most unsafe I ever felt as a traveller was in chicago, supposedly in a "nicer/safe area", and I've been through the balkans in the 1990s.
Here in the deep (American) South, small businesses give discounts for cash because those global elites are trying to take away our cash and want to track us or whatever. To that mindset, cash is a way to resist a theoretical oppression.
This is the reason I try to pay everything I reasonably can with cash. I’m about as northern as you get.
I’m definitely looked as crazy in my friend group from time to time, but over the years I’ve just become known as the guy who will always have cash on him if necessary so I guess the walking ATM bit helped with acceptance of it?
I figure that if folks don’t take a stand and use cash even if they don’t need to now, we will lose the ability to later. I don’t want to live in a world where all my purchases are mineable, because that eventually turns into monitored and then authorized.
The inconvenience is a small price to pay for freedom from surveillance.
It has amused me though over the years how bad cash handling skills have become. When I was a cashier as a teenager 25+ years ago, myself and all my fellow coworkers could break change at relative light speed and often just from mental math/memory. Now it’s amusing watching a young cashier give change back on a $48.31 order after handing them a $100 bill. Sometimes takes longer than the proverbial grandma writing a check back in my day.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, businesses give discounts for cash just because it saves them money. In Portland, we still have a fair number of bars that are cash only. And yeah, liberals here also consider it an invasion of privacy to have to use a card, but they couch it in terms of it being unfair to people without credit or bank accounts (which, tbh, is also a fair argument).
It's been 10 years since I lived in Argentina, but at that point having a credit card (not a debit card) was still reserved mostly for the folks in Barrio Norte. Has that changed now, or is it still mostly debit?
I know that this is true (I used to work in card payment infrastructure), but I've also talked to people who run cash businesses and deliberately under report their income. So I think it's not so uncommon.
I, as a private individual, can accept card payments for 1.69%. I have a physical chip and pin reader (that pairs with my phone), it cost me £25, but I can take contactless payments using just my phone. If I didn't want to use my phone, I'd need the £75 reader that comes with a 4G connection (at no extra transaction or subscription cost).
If I were charging £3k/month, I'd be just above the threshold where paying £19.99/month to get a transaction fee of 0.99% saves money overall.
I get the terminal directly from my bank here in Spain, it's something like €5/month + 0.02% of transaction. Is it much higher in other parts of the EU?
0.2% of 3000€ is 6€. I’m not sure how big of an impact that is, considering the non-negligible costs of handling this much money in cash. If a business earns more money after accepting cash, it’s probably because they don’t pay taxes.
> "FWIW I am Australian and we have a similar adoption rate of cashless payments. If a merchant tries to promote cash options I immediately think they’re doing it for tax evasion reasons"
I don't know about Australia, but in New Zealand many small retailers and restaurants add a card payment surcharge (typically 1.5%-2.5%) automatically when you pay by card. So you are somewhat penalised for the convenience of using a card. This never happens in Europe.
1.5%-2.5% card surcharges (both, debit and credit) are a commonplace in Australia as well.
Visa and Mastercard have successfully lobbied and conspired with local banks in both countries to bury EFTPOS, which were national debit card payment systems with a flat transaction fee ranging between 10 and 50 cents per transaction (depending on the bank).
A while back, Visa/MC realised that debit card transactions, being on the rise, were a highly lucrative market to tap into that they had been missing out on, so they set out on a war of attrition and conspired with the local big banks to phase out EFTPOS cards in favour of Visa/MC debit cards, where the cost of transaction was to be passed on to the card user. Tiered debit cards quickly followed (Platinum, etc.), that attracted higher fee percentages for Visa/MC – payment network commission fees are published on the respective payment network websites. Other than consumers, all parties involved (big banks, payment networks) became moist with excitement at getting a huge slice of the card transactions pie.
But there is the light at the end of the tunnel (other than the light of the oncoming train) – the RBA has moved to ban all card surcharges from July 2026.
It’s quite common in the US everywhere I’ve lived. Every tradesman I’ve used outside of large companies will offer a large discount for cash if you ask about it. They will likely not be the first to initiate though at a certain level of customer, since the social expectations change at a certain level of wealth.
This is almost always in a portion of the invoice written up at around half the agreed amount, and the rest in cash. Or for smaller jobs just on the side with no paperwork involved outside of a firm handshake.
This is the norm for the lower end of the trades. If you’re dealing with a single owner company with a few employees I’d be very surprised if they would not be willing.
Yeah, once you get into “real companies” that are charging upper middle class rates on million dollar properties it changes.
I haven’t had trades work done in Mexico, but considering all my visits were effectively cash only transactions I’d be pretty surprised if it wasn’t at least as common as in the US.
When you say "buying a used car"... do you mean from a dealership, or from a private party? In America, I almost can't imagine buying a used car from an individual without paying them in cash. Indeed, it's one of the few situations where a large amount of cash is almost always required. It's a pain to go to the bank and get that cash. However, this is not because of tax evasion or something ... it's to avoid any sort of dispute or reversal once the sale is final. I would take Bitcoin for a car, or a check I could cash before signing over the vehicle, but I'd never take paypal or some other method where the buyer could contest the charges.
We usually use an app for that (Swish, it's kind of like Venmo I guess, developed in collaboration between the six largest banks). We don't really do transaction reversals in the same way or as commonly as in the US.
Paying for a used car in cash would actually be difficult because handling an amount greater than the equivalent of around USD $1k immediately starts tripping KYC/AML flags at any bank if you try to deposit it, and it's hard to use in day to day life because few places other than grocery stores even accept cash anymore.
Wow... depositing more than $1k would trigger AML. That's incredible. In the US it's not uncommon for contractors to pull $10k cash at the end of a week to pay their workers. Some of that may be due to tax evasion or, just as likely, the workers being in the country illegally. I suppose this is another major reason cash is still "tolerated" in the US, because the casual labor market depends so heavily on undocumented workers. No one besides a few ultra-nationalists would really want to enforce such a thing, as it would drive up construction costs. And the nationalists are paranoid and stock up on cash and gold themselves.
Honestly, that system sounds a bit Orwellian. But also, does that mean that you have to pay a bank transfer fee every time you buy anything?
Generally there are never any transfer fees for private individuals doing domestic transfers. The banks just provide that service for free and eat the cost. Businesses wanting to accept payments via the Swish app usually pay a flat rate of the equivalent of approximately USD $0.15 per transaction (exact terms depends on which bank you use).
It's also worth noting that credit card interchange fees are price controlled in Europe; there's a EU directive that caps the interchange fees at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. Because of this, cashback on credit cards is pitiful in the EU; you can get 0.5% cashback but not much more than that.
> But also, does that mean that you have to pay a bank transfer fee every time you buy anything?
No, not at all. The Swish rails are free to users. But I've never had to pay any transfer fees for domestic transfers anyway. They are just much slower than using Swish (instant transfers) and much more clunky (bank account number etc. vs. phone number/QR-code).
Not every time, very certainly less than on 5% of all normal transactions, and the actual fraction will depend more on whether you count currency conversion fees and how frequently the person you are asking is buying from outside the EES.
I am danish so not quite as anti-cash as Sweden but if people use cash in grocery stores or just stores in general the general sentiment will be that its either because they are old , the cash they have is undeclared income or that it is income from illegal activities.
Swish uses the proprietary "BankID" system, and the company behind it has let frauds go on for years and blaming the victims. Therefore I have chosen not to support them.
It didn't have proper two-factor authentication when you just had to tap a button on the smartphone to approve a log-in or a bank transfer (and users didn't always tell which was which). Now it requires reading a QR code — which it should have done all the time.
AFAIK it still does not use any secure key storage on the smartphone, so if your phone gets rooted by an attacker, the attacker could gain access to your bank accounts. So far, frauds have been much easier to pull off, so criminals have not bothered to hack it. (that we know of)
I'm not an huge fan of BankID either, but a few corrections/clarifications:
1. BankID always allowed to have different settings for login and for signature. I have done that since forever. For example, I configured login to allow biometrics but not signature. If it's forcing me to enter the security code I know it is a signature, which forces me to pause. I cannot sign anything by mistake (like a transfer) because I'm forced to enter my long security code to complete it. And for the much more frequent scenario of pure logins, I can just use my finger.
2. I believe it does use the hardware-backed keychain if the device has one. I cannot prove it as the source code is not available, but I remember being curious and checking this on a rooted device.
I’d say he’s correct, people under 60 that uses cash are considered, if not criminal, at least suspicious, like they have something to hide. Or simply wackos.
I haven’t used cash for the last 15 years or so. Except for when I had carpenters at home who wanted to get paid in cash (to avoid taxes, so called black money).
>"people under 60 that uses cash are considered, if not criminal, at least suspicious, like they have something to hide. Or simply wackos."
I have barely used cash in 25 years. This doesn't mean anything at all. You're probably putting this solely in the context of using cash for significantly large purchases, e.g. higher 4 digit sum or above, or as in your example a craftsman who want to exempt it from his or her accounting. Nobody bats an eye at a person buying groceries, or some gadget for a couple of hundred, with cash.
no we use cards for everything, even for just buying an icecream or something.
most older people use cards too actually, but sometimes you can see one struggling with their coins and notes when buying groceries yes.
I regularly see people use cash for common and small purchases. In the grocery store checkout line, at the kiosks, at the pizzeria, and so on. Card is by far the most common option, but the discussion was never about the ratio.
So do you like always take split bills for everything? Like when eg. 4 coworkers go to eat together (ie. not a situation where one person pays everything)? Over here in the balkans/mitteleuropa you just put some approximate amount of cash on the table. Same for kids, you're not giving a kid your credit card when you send him to a bakery to get bread, you give him a couple of euros in cash.
> Same for kids, you're not giving a kid your credit card when you send him to a bakery to get bread, you give him a couple of euros in cash.
I got caught out by a thing like this, recently. (I'm on the east coast of the US.)
My kids had a day off from school, and it was a nice day to ride bikes. There's a small municipal park around 5 miles (8 km) away, with a nice mini-golf course and a grill/cafe next to it. They were eager to go by themselves, so I told them they could ride their bikes there and gave each kid enough cash for a round of mini-golf, a cold drink and some lunch.
The park was card only! While that has been happening more and more, I was not expecting that from a city park. Thankfully, they're not shy kids, and they persuaded one of the park employees to use a personal card in exchange for cash. But I was shocked. They're 10 and 13 years old... it had not previously occurred to me that I should give them cards of any kind.
In that situation either (1) someone will pay for everyone at the table and then everyone else will “Swish” (the name of the local money transfer app) them their respective share of the total bill; or (2) they’ll just ask the server to split the bill and each person pays for their part. Both are actually quite common, and having lived many years in Sweden, I’ve never eaten at a restaurant where asking the server to split the bill was a problem.
Or, if it's a group that goes out together often and doesn't vary their orders much (in terms of order-of-magnitude of spend), then this will sometimes evolve into a rotation on one person picking up the tab each time.
Reporting for Hungary and Italy here: at the restaurant you ask for split bills or someone pays and the others will just pay back. It's been a few years since this was a problem, shops have adapted.
In Denmark someone will pay, and the others will use MobilePay to pay back their share.
But you've reminded me of a case I still use cash: on business trips abroad with a mixed group of people from several countries, most people put money on the table to pay their share.
quite often we pay separate by cards, that is so common the personell even asks if that is how we like to pay. otherwise one pay using his card and we swish (tranfer money instantly using the swish app) him the money.
Tradespeople sometimes request cash payment or provide a good discount for cash payments (well above any fee they would be charged). I guess where you are no one considers this dubious (really???) but at least in discussions with family the feeling is that the request for cash only payment is dubious.
We also have a local retail establishment that is cash only. I think it's looked at dubiously.
I personally have experienced it. Someone wanted to split payment on something between cash and a check so they could report the value of the item was lower because it would save them taxes every year. Again, the use of cash was I think a bit dubious.
Note: Cash allows you to avoid all sorts of obligations (tax / family support / debt collection and garnishment etc etc), ineligiblity for banking (europe is pretty strict in some cases for example with folks with no legal status with banking) and is still used in things like the drug trade. Even if everyone around you considers large cash transactions reasonable that might be naivety or they may simply not have been exposed to larger cash transaction activity.
I come from the UK where not accepting cash is only ok in hipster areas of London (or, was at the time).
When I joined my gamedev studio I had colleagues asking me why I had cash, and many of them didn’t even recognise what it looked like (there was a switchover of the notes a year or two prior).
There was an insinuation that I would use it for drugs. So, I suspect that the parent is right here.
Natives asking why someone has cash, and not even recognizing bank notes...? It sounds so absurd that I'm certain you're exaggerating wildly. If not, you've had an outlier experience during a limited window of time in the country. Just like the parent. This isn't really representative.
Add.: another poster suggested that someone had a bit of a laugh with you by saying it, which is also entirely possible. Basic joke.
I am Swedish and have lived here all my life and I have no idea what the current banknotes look like. I have literally never used them. I remember what they used to look like 20 years ago, but I know they have changed since then.
I've had young (ish, 25 say) Danes say they'd never seen the most recent design of 500DKK notes before. Many more hadn't seen the 1000DKK, though that's since been withdrawn from use.
I believe them. Cash machines dispense(d) them, but usually only if you withdraw 1000DKK or more in a single transaction. That's unusual for people that rarely use cash.
I had them as I was following the official advice to keep some cash around in case the banking system is hacked etc, but I spent them and withdrew 100DKK notes when the advice was updated to point out that if everyone had only 500DKKs at home it wasn't very flexible.
I am slightly ashamed to realise that my banking app shows I haven't made a cash withdrawal in Denmark for more than 12 months — the second part of the official advice is to use cash occasionally to keep that system working.
I'm in the UK and I have friends who will tell you hand on heart that they have never handled a £50 note. They know they exist but they haven't had one.
which as well as explaining the background to the note and debates over whether it should be taken out of circulation also points out the context the average British adult was making about 20 cash transactions a month as of 2018 (none of them involving £50 notes)
I would very much disagree with the latter assertion. I work as a cashier, and I get 50s and 100s _all the time_. I wish they'd stop because it drains my till very fast. Lol.
I'm not even sure if that I knew there was a $50 bill. And that's as an American of 30+ years that uses cash routinely. Multiple times I've cashed checks and gotten it all in 2's, but honestly can't ever remember a $50 bill. I always have at least one $100 bill in my wallet and don't ever recall getting a $50 in change, has to be the least common note. But now I'm thinking waaaaay back and does the President on it have a big mustache? Time to see what a $50 looks like.
It would be a "unique" situation. Most AMTs (not all, but most) only dispense $20 bills, the rarer ones will dispense $5s or $10s, and they're rare enough that I make a note of them. I have never encountered an ATM that gives a $50.
Your best bet of happening into a $50 is if you go to a bank for an in-person withdraw and they ask you for preferred denominations. Generally the money is dispensed in $20s even there unless specified.
Your second best bet would be if you're selling something "on the side" and the purchaser uses a $50 in a transaction, which I would say is also rare these days, most people use Venmo or equiv.
Your best bet of handling a $50 is probably as a bartender, or of course as a bank teller.
I have held $50s a few times in my life, and even my reaction is "huh, a $50, don't see those often"
Huh, the Wells Fargo ATMs here in San Francisco actively offer me $50 bills on a regular basis! I wonder how much this various by bank, by region, or by ATM manufacturer.
I've never handled a £50 note. (I am young enough that if you gave me £1 for every year I've never handled one, I wouldn't be able to afford one. But I am old enough that I could dip into my lifetime of savings to make up the difference.)
A friend's dad showed me one when I was at school - that's it. He seemed amused I hadn't seen one before, then after making a minor show of it, as if it was some precious, rare item, said he'd never previously seen one either. They've been uncommon my whole life, and apparently could/can be difficult to actually use, shop assistants being unfamiliar with them and not confident in their legitimacy.
I expect today most people would use bank transfers for the sort of sum where the sheer number of notes would make a £50 one useful.
I use them regularly and have never had anyone not accept them.
I have had many places reject $100 bills though.
I’m that weirdo that tries to pay cash for most everything, so sample size is large and across a diverse set of businesses.
Due to what I tend to pay cash for these days (lunches, drinks with a friend, etc.) and prices being what they are, they are rapidly becoming my “go-to” denomination.
I carry a few in my wallet, just in case, but I could honestly not tell what color the different notes are or what portrait is on each without looking. Bad forgeries would easily trick me.
this is definitely more widepsread than you imagine in the UK. Most major cities are heading in the cashless direction - the only time I use cash is for my window cleaner.
I fully understand why the Swedish government wants to get rid of cash. What I'm saying is that the people simply don't feel that cash is in any way dirty.
That article does not at all make the assertion you are claiming it does: "The new law allows police to seize expensive goods even from people who are not under investigation for a crime, if they cannot prove they acquired them lawfully."
I don't love the law, but having cash on its own is not grounds for seizure. Having expensive goods that you cannot explain how you managed to pay for is what they are targeting, according to your source.
This is basically a law that takes your expensive shit away if you are too stupid to launder your ill-gotten cash.
You can put lipstick on a pig all you want, but if you reverse the burden of proof from "we have to prove your money is dirty" to "you have to prove your money is clean", that is a very clear cut case of "possessing cash is grounds for seizure" to me.
By the way, have you ever wondered what the definition of "expensive goods" is? Of course, the powers that be want to make it all about the Rolexes and Lamborghinis, but a cursory peek at the actual law reveals [1]:
> Section 4 If the property has been seized and the value of what may be confiscated does not exceed one tenth of the price base amount according to Chapter 2, Sections 6 and 7 of the Social Insurance Code, a question about confiscation of the property may be examined by 1. a police officer, or 2. another employee of the Police Authority or the Security Service appointed by the respective authority.
Which effectively means that using the "price base amount" value of ~59k SEK in 2025, you are subject to asset forfeiture at the whims of any police officer once you have more than 600 bucks in your wallet or under the mattress.
But I'm sure they will only use it on brown gang bangers or knife wielding foreign drunks and not law abiding citizens such as myself, so it's fine!
You said: "Sweden has introduced civil asset forfeiture where the mere possession of cash can make you a suspect." in a conversation about cash in Sweden, and posted an article about how there is a law that allows police to seize goods in certain circumstance.
I pointed out that cash != luxury goods.
I already said it was a law I don't agree with. But it also isn't a law that says that police can just take cash from you according to your sources . The section that you quoted doesn't seem to support your assertion about cash either, but I need the rest of the context.
In reading the law it is allowed to seize cash under very specific circumstances, but simply possessing cash is not enough evidence to seize it.
Cash seizure ("penningbeslag") can be used in an investigation concerning independent forfeiture ("utredning om självständigt förverkande").
The initiation of an investigation and the use of "penningbeslag" are contingent on the "reason to assume that property originates from criminal activity." This implies that merely possessing cash, without any connection or suspicion of it being linked to criminal activity, would not be sufficient grounds for seizure under this law. There needs to be an antecedent suspicion that the cash is proceeds of crime.
An investigation for independent forfeiture should be initiated "if there is reason to assume that property originates from criminal activity" (2 kap. 2 §). The purpose of such an investigation is to "investigate whether the property originates from criminal activity" (2 kap. 1 §).
Therefore, the primary circumstance for cash seizure is when there is reason to believe that the cash originates from criminal activity.
> You can put lipstick on a pig all you want, but if you reverse the burden of proof from "we have to prove your money is dirty" to "you have to prove your money is clean", that is a very clear cut case of "possessing cash is grounds for seizure" to me.
Swedish law does not describe such a reversal for the initial act of seizure or investigation. As previously discussed, the law states: "En utredning om självständigt förverkande ska inledas om det finns anledning att anta att egendom härrör från brottslig verksamhet" (2 kap. 2 §). This means there must first be a "reason to assume" that the property (including cash) originates from criminal activity before an investigation is initiated and seizure measures like "penningbeslag" (cash seizure) are applied.
> Section 4 If the property has been seized and the value of what may be confiscated does not exceed one tenth of the price base amount according to Chapter 2, Sections 6 and 7 of the Social Insurance Code, a question about confiscation of the property may be examined by 1. a police officer, or 2. another employee of the Police Authority or the Security Service appointed by the respective authority.
This section, "Beslut om förverkande" (Decisions on forfeiture), discusses who can decide on the forfeiture of already seized property (beslag or penningbeslag) if its value is below a certain threshold. It pertains to the administrative decision to forfeit after the property has already been seized based on the criteria in 2 kap., not the criteria for the initial seizure itself.
Swedish banks (even the Riksbank linked above) regularly refuse to turn cash into digital money unless you can ”prove” where you got it from. It’s not sufficient to say (with immense credibility) that you worked hard all your life and saved it. Entire inheritances are regularly wiped out due to this, when high denomination bills are obsoleted by the Riksbank. So I’d say it’s not only a common sentiment but also government policy.
You are right I think. I lived in Finland and rarely used cash. Even people selling their clothes at pop up second hand markets seemed to be able to take card. It has nothing to do with criminality, just culture. Germans use cash a lot and it's harder for me now I live outside the eurozone to go there.
Most Swedes have Swish (mobile payments) so fleamarkets etc. mostly require that. Before I had my Swedish bank account set up (so six years ago) and thus BankId & Swish I often had to get my partner to pay for things even though I had a Visa card and Swedish cash.
> Are you sure this isn't impression you've gotten from isolated reactions involving a small number of individuals, perhaps just a single individual?
Swedish here. The impression is common. Sweden is a small country and has long had a fairly cohesive culture. The culture has decided that digital payments are the way. Deviation from the collective way is always suspect.
Your impression is misguided. Maybe it's the norm in Stockholm, but 80% of the population live elsewhere. We do use cash and nobody thinks its suspicious to pay with cash, stop making stuff up.
Depends. Very long time ago I was approached by a group of seemingly friendly people asking for direction, then I felt sharp object to my belly and they told me to walk slowly towards cash point. They said they'll stab me if I don't withdraw all money I can. So I did. When cards were not popular, I would have small amount of cash in the wallet and anything more substantial hidden in a sock or elsewhere. Thieves would take what would be comfortable for me to lose. I guess it can be the same with cards - have a card with small amount and actual card hidden, but it is not as easy to hide as cash. Then you have whole other kettle of fish - banking apps. There's been instances of people being forced to do transfer at knifepoint. For that reason I don't use any apps, apart from throwaway bank account - again with small balance just in case. Shame more banks are restricting web access, which I think is most secure.
Not sure its considered criminal and dirty. I agree its more a convenience thing. There is no need ever to have cash (other than when payments systems are down but then lots of stores systems in general are down). I don't even think I have seen any cash for many years.
This is something I've heard from multiple locals, not something I inferred myself. As you can see, even here in the comment section you have people both for and against the idea. The notion definitely exists, how widely it's held exactly, hard to say. In my experience, that explanation came up often enough to catch my attention.
I'm pretty sure the younger generation is intimidated by cash and think maybe only criminals and boomers use it? I am middle-aged and keep a couple of hundred dollars on me of petty cash for day to day activities. If someone “holds me up” it's not a lot, but it's great for keeping my day-to-day purchases anonymous. I'm all for making cash “an option” for every purchase or at least those under say $10k, not everything needs to be tracked or known.
It is interesting how the European cash culture is so very different between the countries. In Austria I struggled to find places that would take any kind of digital payments. Germany wasn't as bad, but was pretty bad. My experience is about 3 years old.
We hardly use cash in New Zealand, over 85% of transactions are electronic. There’s a lot of places that don’t accept cash anymore because cash handling is annoying and risky.
That said, nobody thinks of cash as dirty, just annoying. Also our payment system has always been able to work offline, because it started rolling out in the 80s.
Since when does EFTPOS work offline? It works off the internet, but not "offline", if the phones are down, EFTPOS is down. It happens with relative frequency, given the weather. Or trucks hitting boxes, or diggers cutting cables. Shit happens.
Regarding places not accepting cash: NZ First (political party) is proposing to protect the right to use cash and make all businesses accept cash for up to $500 items.
> The Cash Transactions Protection Bill would mandate businesses in trade accept cash payment for goods valued up to $500.
Since always. EFTPOS was designed with offline support (signed receipts) as an emergency fallback when the network is down. It’s been like that since the 90s, I know because I’ve been using EFTPOS since then and experienced many outages.
It is capped at $300 per card used and 200 transactions stored (I believe some large merchants can vary this, but not by much), it’s only for temporary failures not multi-hour outages.
You can quickly find information with your favourite search engine.
I've visited New Zealand a few times en route to Antarctica. The only time I've ever needed to take out cash was for the Christchurch bus service. I was in MIQ on the way in, but they gave us free reign on the way out because Antarctica was considered virus-free (and according to immigration NZ, it counts as the Ross Dependency). There was obviously a lot of push for contactless payments in 2021. I get the impression that the pandemic helped really cement it, although it sounds like the UK where we've had widespread contactless for almost 20 years.
The pandemic helped the banks push contactless which they love, because it’s not EFTPOS.
EFTPOS is our national post of sale system, it has very low or no fees for any party involved. Merchants pay a fixed machine rental per month which can include unlimited transactions, or may have a per transaction fee of up to $0.20. Most individuals do not pay a fee for using EFTPOS and there’s normally no card fee, though some banks have accounts with fees that have other benefits (eg higher deposit interest rates to encourage saving).
Contactless goes via the standard card network extortion. Since 2022 the interchange rate has been capped by legislation which has helped merchants a lot, but the per transaction fee over the card network is still far higher than EFTPOS.
Contactless EFTPOS does exist in Australia - we share a lot of the underlying tech - but the banks won’t activate it here because they’d lose the interchange fees.
Online EFTPOS is starting to gain market share though, which is nice.
To add some more context to your comment. One of the big attacks was in 2021 with the Kaseya ransomware attack that caused one of the larger grocers (coop) to essentially be unable to operate. Made national news as they had to give away product for free in some places.
> And yes, we use cash so seldom that most people cannot from memory recall what the bills/coins look like!
It didn't help that the Riskbank replaced all bills and coins during a relatively short time period, and did it badly. People used up/deposited their old and didn't get new.
The new coins and bills have unnecessary denominations and bad design that made cash bothersome to use.
They introduced an unnecessary 2 SEK coin, that is almost indistinguishable from the 1 SEK coin — especially if you are unused to them.
They also introduced an unnecessary 200 SEK bill, that was just too big to be useful for small purchases. Several times I've seen people at ATMs withdrawing 100 SEK over and over again, just because they wanted the more useful 100 SEK bills.
> Digital payments are very convenient and deeply integrated, so long as you have a local ID which allows you use the local payment system Swish etc.
Just to reiterate how ubiquitous Swish and BankID are here: 99.9% of Swedish residents age 18-67 have BankID (8.6M users), while Swish has 8.7M private users, and 93% of those users send or receive money via Swish at least once per month.
Physical attacks are also possible, this site focuses on software so much of the time, while acts occur in the physical world. Cyberattacks are grey areas, but based on some of the undersea cable cutting and factory fires Russia has been performing, physical attacks are very much on the table if you can obscure the source.
It's funny. I live in rural USA and I overheard a girl say she wouldn't date a guy who uses a card as it wasn't very manly. He needs to use cash apparently. Where I live cards are seen as controlled by "them" and allow the government to spy on you and come after you for taxes.
Wouldn't say it's dirty or criminal, it's just convenient to use card, but if you buy a car it would be a bit weird if you insist on cash. It's mostly old people paying with cash these days.
How do you pay for things that are just one or two euros? In my local boulangerie they don't accept cards for less than 5€, so if I just want a baguette I need to have cash.
That was a thing in Sweden as well, but it's illegal to charge an extra fee when using cards since 2010. So to answer the question, everyone just uses cards even for small purchases, and often those "cards" aren't physical cards but Apple or Google Pay on the phone.
If you ignore supermarkets, basically no place sells stuff in that low of an amount. Using Stripe as an example, transaction fees are 1.5%+1.8kr. I’m hard pressed to find a place that sells items with a price below 20kr, and even cheap crap from china costs at least that when buying online. So unless your business has an unexpectedly large amount of low price transactions, it’s not a big issue.
In the UK most small shops had this same 'minimum spend' requirement for card. It disappeared a few years ago (maybe during Covid) and now I haven't come across minimum spend in a long time. That was one of the last things that made me always keep some cash on hand. Now, I genuinely cannot remember the last time I used cash - it's been at least 2-3 years, probably longer.
Not sure what you are talking about. A baguette is ~1€, same for a croissant or a chocolatine. Maybe 1.10 or 1.20 depending on the place. I do it all the time. It forces me to have the cash otherwise I need to take another random item I don't really need.
Oh it's easy: they don't use Visa / Mastercard, but their own domestic system called Swish, which is much cheaper for businesses and of course completely free for individuals.
Similar instant payment systems have really blossomed across the world, especially in recent years. One by one, countries are finally figuring out that there's no reason to rely on American brands for all of the payment processing.
A lot of stores have minimums if you want to pay with Swish, the more common answer to how we pay for small amounts like that is... we just use our cards like any other purchase.
No because you need BankID which is issued by your bank and to get BankID you need a Swedish bank and a personnummer. You can use a foreign phone number with Swish but some banks don't allow it (or only allow some countries, e.g. finland).
How do kids get pocket money in Sweden? I can't imagine grandparents handing over prepaid debit cards to 8 years old to go buy candy at the neighborhood store?
Swedbank offers debit cards to kids as young as seven [1]. Depending on the kid's age (and what the parents configure), there will be different limits on how much the kid can spend.
Swish is the de facto standard for sending money between individuals [2], and that's what grandparents tend to use to send money to their grandchildren.
It's fee-less (for person-to-person transfers use at least) and it connects your bank account with your phone number. So if anyone wants to send you money, they can just open Swish and enter your phone number (or scan a QR code) and send you some. You also have to sign the payment with the BankID app, which is the de facto standard for authentication [3].
And when I write de facto standard I really mean it. 99.9% of Swedish residents age 18-67 have BankID (8.6M users), while Swish has 8.7M private users (93% of which use Swish at least once per month).
In Canada there's MyDoh, which is specifically a debit card you can give to kids including in that age range. One of the major Canadian banks runs this. Can only imagine that it's more advanced in Sweden.
That may be practical, but many kids I observe in my family etc like to collect the money and see it and are proud of their collection and about what they saved. That goes away with a card ... and I wonder how that impacts the "feeling" for it. Counting and making likes and plans about what to buy is a big part of learning to deal with it.
Like or not the world is a digital currency world for the most part these days. I want my kids to understand that those numbers on a computer screen have real world value. How many young adults get into trouble with their first credit card or debit card because the money isn't "real" to them? In the US it's quite a few.
I don't have a final answer to this. However in m observation with different families and kids is that some start relatively early, before the kid can do arithmetics or such, they can count till a pile got enough money for the sweets or toy they want and then count the other pile to see how much is left and if they can buy the other.
Doing this in a digital system requires first some computing device (be it phone or laptop or whatever) then check the account value, read it correctly, then do some arithmetics and then interpret the result. That's a year or two older.
More or less exactly so. There is another downside to it: When money is just a piece of plastic which you touch the cash register with and get what you want, how to you learn to appreciate money? Coins and paper money is also excellent for counting, as they naturally come in different valuations.
When counting money is just arithmetics and never cash, something is missing, and it's very clear in many young kids. Money is just points in a game, suddenly you're out, and then you can't get what you want anymore.
Where I grew up, (sadly) it's not been common since at least 50 years for 8 year olds to go buy candy at a neighborhood store by themselves. Parents had to drive us everywhere.
I haven't used a banknote in more than 15 years.
During this time I can't recall a single time I saw anyone using a banknote either.
Here in Malmö where I live, especially since COVID, you'll be searching more and more to find stores that take cash (besides supermarkets and kiosks and the like). I would say more than half of them don't accept cash any longer. Speaking of restaurants or pubs, my estimation would be that 2/3 have signs that say "no cash". Maybe more.
You can't do simple things as taking public transport if you want to pay by cash. You can't pay in the bus. You can't buy in the machine. It's all card or app only. You'll need to search around for an equivalent of a 7-11 kiosk to be able to buy a ticket using cash. Depending on where exactly you are when you need that, it may take as much walking than you wanted to save by taking public transport.
If you took a daily trip to the Danish side (Copenhagen) and need to come back home, I'm not even sure if it's possible to get back if you need to buy a ticket and only have cash on hand. Only Skånetrafiken sells that particular ticket and only via machines that don't take cash.
Handling cash became more expensive than taking card payments. It's also more complicated in terms of logistics and payments take longer. With this set of incentives, it's understandable why the shift happened.
Not saying I particularly like this development. Just reporting my anecdotal experience.
If your local hairdresser gives you a cheaper price when paying cash, wouldn't you assume tax evasion? (criminal).
Someone selling a used bike, or other items of similar value, on second hand market and not accepting Swish would maybe not directly be considered criminal, but would for sure raise an extra eyebrow about the origins of the goods.
Otherwise correct, nobody would blink if you use cash for other daily purchases like ice cream or groceries, even if unusual.
> but cash is often considered to be dirty and criminal, to the point that most don't have any at all.
Is it because it's considered dirty and criminal, or is it because it's a pain in the ass to deal with, and most people have no reason to bother with regularly withdrawing it, and then carrying it around?
It's funny how these attitudes vary across the EU. Here in Spain the government is trying to move everyone to digital payments so they can keep an eye on the flow of money, but normal folks are transacting as much as possible in cash to hide from the tax man...
I live in the US and never use cash. I use a credit card and automatically pay the entire balance every month so I don't pay any interest but get 2% cash back. I pay rent using a app on my phone and a checking account.
it's really visa lobbying to destroy the (somehow worse than visa) easy credit new players. they give credit like candy because being online and low value only it's easier to avoid (or swallow) fraud.
forcing their hand to accept offline sales mean they can't decide on the spot, and now those 5k credit lines which they only allow transactions for sub 100 purchases at a time will be wide open for offline fraud they can't detect, and which visa already know how to handle/sustain.
this will probably be lobbied elsewhere soon. i predict Netherlands is next.
This worked nicely until the tensions in Europe lead to more cyberattacks rolling in and suddenly you have people not being able to buy food, medicine, and so forth. Not too long after, there was a government advisory urging people to keep some cash reserves in case a larger cyberattack happens, but cultural habits at large are hard to change. This is of course a coarse simplification of the context, but might help understand this incentive a bit better.