In the Nordic countries, you can certainly pay admittance to a club and shop in a thrift shop with a card. You can pay by bank transfer done with a phone app (MobilePay in Denmark, Swish in Sweden, etc) at a garage sale. At the last garage sale I went to, there wasn't anyone around -- just a sign saying everything was priced, and to transfer the money to 12 34 56 78 with MobilePay.

In fact, trying to pay cash can cause problems -- so many people use the electronic methods, the doorman might not have any change. (This is often the case at the weird gigs I go to, where only 25 people attend anyway, and it barely breaks even for the promoter).

I've heard of a trial to donate money to the homeless using a card, but it was only a trial. It's not normal to tip in a restaurant (or anywhere else).

However, the post spoke of having to buy illegal alcohol at college, so the person is clearly in America. But there are always queues at the cash machines near Christiania in Copenhagen, where everyone goes to buy weed. That's the only remaining thing Danes use cash for...

> It's not normal to tip in a restaurant (or anywhere else).

Um, what? It's still normal and people do tip at resturants in Sweden. To be fair, neither you or I have any numbers to back it up and have to chalk it up to experience/intuition.

I'm still learning, I've lived in Denmark for 18 months.

I thought I'd finally got a clear answer (no tip) but evidently not.

I've actually wondered what the impact on buskers, clerks that make some money off a tip jar, etc. is of the shift toward plastic. I guess, in the US, a dollar bill is still a relatively small amount. But I know that I basically never have change on me these days unless it's quarters to put in a parking meter.

I imagine one of those swipe attachments for a cheap android phone would work well. The UI is known pretty well now, and many people trust them in the US. I often see them at festivals, where it was previously all-cash, but are now maybe 20% plastic, usually for bigger items ($65 tshirts lol.)

I imagine tip jar employees are doing all right. I used to drop a dollar and whatever coins I got back as change in there, now I push the 20% button on their iPad, which is almost always more.

It varies, right? If it hits the iPad or whatever, then the tip goes through management, has to be taxed, may be tipped out to other people, whatever.

Some of that is simplified by just having a jar of cash with limited options for opaque gaming.