Re:Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
by RivieraKid on Sunday August 14, 2016 @03:18PM
(#12286888)
Wow, that's interesting, I'm a big fan of card payments because tap to pay is super convenient (most places in Prague have card readers) but what annoys me is the Visa / MasterCard duopoly. Because this means that a fraction of every payment goes to an American company - it's not a competetive market so they have a sizeable profit margin. It's cool that you have a local alternative, I wish we had that too or at least more than 2 competitors to push profits down, so that card payments don't leak money out of the economy.
Re:Sweden leads the race to become cashless society
by fpoling on Sunday August 14, 2016 @03:34PM
(#12286957)
There is still a problem as shops do not pass savings from using a local payment system to the customer. As some banks started to offer cash-back cards that return up to 1% of payments back, as a customer I have more insensitive to use cache-back credit card than a local one.
However many shops accept only cards from Norway that are connected to the BankAccept system which are significantly cheaper for a shop to accept than credit cards.
Also as a sign of times street musicians sometimes write their phone number for Vipps, a local payment system that allows to send money just by knowing a phone number.
Still the country is far from cachless judging by the number of professional beggars in big cities. Somehow they make a living so people still curry coins.