Sweden leads the race to become cashless society

Re:Sweden leads the race to become cashless society by towb on Sunday August 14, 2016 @03:01PM (#12286816)

As I see it, this has the potential of being a disaster for certain groups of people in the society. Old and poor. And there are no free solutions, you have to spend to spend. The old paypal tax but on every purchase you do. There are problems with this that has to be solved before it's implemented but aren't yet there for the early adopters, which may then leave too many people behind. These are some of my concerns, but what do I know...

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Re:Sweden leads the race to become cashless society by StavrosK on Sunday August 14, 2016 @03:06PM (#12286846)

Yep, in a cashless society, everything is 3% more expensive.

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Re:Sweden leads the race to become cashless society by kristofferR on Sunday August 14, 2016 @03:14PM (#12286879)

That's not really true. The average fee in Sweden is closer to 1% than 3%, and handling cash is really expensive. Realistically a cashless society should save money.

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Re:Sweden leads the race to become cashless society by colejohnson66 on Sunday August 14, 2016 @03:42PM (#12286997)

Well yes, it saves people time (and time is money), but it's a trade off and sometimes ends up costing more than it saves.

If your kid wants to buy something, normally you just give them cash and they can't spend anything more. If you give them your card, now they can spend as much as they want ($1000 on Clash of Clans for example). While there are solutions such as giving your kid their own card you transfer the money to, it's a lot more effort than just pulling out a $5, and I'm sure many parents would forgo that route and just hand the kid their card.

What do you do when you want to buy something anonymously? Normally, you'd just pay with cash. Want to donate to Wikileaks without anyone knowing? Use a money order. In a cashless society, you can't do it as simple as that. You need to purchase prepaid debit cards (which costs time). And if the prepaids can be linked with the purchaser, then you'd need to spend even more time buying bitcoins, tossing them in a tumbler, then buying prepaid debit cards. A lot of extra work compared to just using cash or money order.

So yes, a cashless saves time, but it also costs time in other areas. Has Sweden found a balance? Doubt it.

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Re:Sweden leads the race to become cashless society by lukeschlather on Sunday August 14, 2016 @03:28PM (#12286927)

Margins matter. Somebody who makes $100k maybe spends $60k/year and doesn't care that they pay $600 for transaction fees.

Somebody who makes $30k spends $28k/year and $280 in transaction fees has a huge effect on net savings.

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Re:Sweden leads the race to become cashless society by towb on Sunday August 14, 2016 @03:52PM (#12287036)

Maybe so. But then one have to ask whose money we are saving by getting rid of the cash.

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