Progress is sometimes a regress in disguise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power

Captain is handed a manual when plant life is discovered. Took him a second to stop talking to the book and start using his hands on the pages. It was a pretty quick scene, but humorous.

Side note, the Wall-E short is great and one of the best Pixar shorts, imo.

https://youtu.be/pQHX-SjgQvQ

I’d love to have been in the design meeting where thry decided that was more important than world voltage compatibility.

“World voltage are you mad? Who packs a toothbrush when they go travelling? Nope, what the people are clamering for is bluetooth support!”

I've had one US-bought base unit fail and, given the simplicity of the device (just coils for transforming voltage and induction charging) I'm assuming it's due to being plugged in to a 220V outlet for an extended period.

I still wish they had produced a 17" with dual video outputs.

I would trade all this shit for a week battery time.

So yes, while smartphones are not perfect, I see no intentions from developers to fix that.

They are told what to buy from flashy ads and multimillion marketing budgets. Keeping the battery week keeps you tethered to your desk and requires you to think about every night b for bend)did I plug in my phone?)

Low battery drives usage. If you had a large weeklong battery, you might put your phone down every now and again without looking at it... a big no no for big tech.

Then why do consumers constantly praise thinner phones, and continue to purchase them? I think you're mistaking what you want and consider a good choice compared to what everyone else actually wants and is willing to support.

It reminds me of the 80s ghetto blasters fad. Size was the thing. As they got ever bigger they got far worse as there was so much resonant empty plastic and they distorted and rattled madly with volume anywhere over 2. Size and LEDs counted above all. Sound? LOL look at these LEDs man.

Most recent changes, from all manufacturers, have been deliberately consumer hostile. There's not much left to actually innovate with. Consumers don't want to keep swapping ecosystems - as that means hassle and re-buying a bunch of apps. Often they'd prefer not to even switch manufacturers if they've ended up using a cloud app for photos or something. So they just buy the next iThing from whoever even if it is too big, or is anti case because of edge to edge screens, or has a fake notch.

Talk about Emperor's new clothes.

So what can I choose that's against this trend? Oh. Nothing. Yet I need a phone, and probably an app or two for work. Best buy something or risk job loss. Even if I detest all the offerings as too big for any pocket I possess.

In your eyes it's a vote for thinner or bigger because a sale was made. No that's not how it works. It's not a simple commodity with only one feature to make, break, and validate the sale. To vote by not purchasing I'd have to cease having a mobile.

What do you wear?

My current SE fits my biking gear pockets without fiddling, my previous Android was a bit fiddly. The one before that (my one attempt at a larger phone) fit properly in nothing I own except my winter coats. It had to live in my rucksack, so got left at home a lot, and on the desk through lunch breaks. No surprise that it wasn't many months before I Ebayed it and bought something sensible. :p

Anything bigger than the SE would sometimes fall out of my spring/autumn weight jackets if I just bent over or sat. All except SE got too big for comfort in back pocket of jeans any more. Especially as they get so thin and large as to be asking for a bent or broken phone.

I don't think that's so unusual? It's my other half who's pocket limited. :)

Both my iPhone and Pixel 3 fit my hand. I'm 5'6.

Having two back-facing cameras enables your phone to do computer stereo vision stuff, which are key for 3d sensing and augmented reality applications.

Apple discussed this in interviews after the X came out. They realized they needed somewhere for the camera and face scanner, so decided since they needed a notch anyway they would take full advantage by adding in those sensors and features that could make best use of it. The proximity sensor and speakers could have worked without a notch, but work better with it. These considerations, together with aesthetics related to balancing the size of the notch and the screen areas either side, were the driving factors.

(I have an IP phone at work, and it's an unintuitive unreliable beast.)

And audio quality on most Bluetooth headphone/earphones sucks. And now I have to carry a zillion dongles for everything.

But wireless headsets is arguably much better (at least Apple thinks so). So kudos to Apple for having going out on a limb to support something they really believe un.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

plus cash it's also accepted everywhere

In Denmark we have a festival called Skanderborg festival, and they build both your ticket and your cashless payment into the festival bracelet.

You use the bracelet to pay everywhere, and you can add money to it a range of payment methods, from using a visa or similar in their app, to visiting one of the cash places where you can use an atm and then add funds to your bracelet.

It’s easily the best payment experience I’ve ever had at a festival.

The real problem comes when the system breaks down- which I've seen happen at plenty of festivals. At that point if cash isn't an option then commerce simply stops- screwing both vendor and customer alike.

Even if you could get your money back, you're still waiting at lines to recharge the bracelet. It's a joke.

With cash, you just come prepared and withdraw at any ATM long before the festival. Bracelets didn't solve any problem except disconnect the money handling event from the purchasing event so that you lose track of it, like how microtransactions are never priced in actual currency.

If that’s because the festival organizers don’t let you retrieve your money easily or without a cost, that’s an issue with the festival management and not with the idea of digital money.

I’ve been to a festival which allowed us to withdraw money freely (I think they had some restrictions such as only 1 free withdrawal after the festival was over, and/or it had to be done within a week or so) but that allowed us to simply load in excess money so we never had to recharge. That worked really well for us.

The ability for poor implementations to exist is itself a strike against the general concept.

Have to load money, have to retrieve money, and have zero insight into how much I’ve already spent without even more apps or interfaces.

Handling cash is a hassle in many ways:

1. It's slow. Obviously it is not slow in the best case when the customer throws in the exact change, but it is _really_ slow in the probably more typical case when the drunkard is at the counter and starts to dig into the pockets and find out if he has enough coins or when the seventh customer in the row wants to pay his ten cent lollipop with a hundred dollar bill and you run out of change.

2. It ties capital to keep sufficient amount of change in all of the booths.

3. It is difficult/expensive to manage securely and safely. You need to figure out how to stop personnel and other people stealing the money. Also your personnel likely feels more safe when they know that nobody can think that hey can come and try to steal money from you because you simply have none.

Or if I'm feeling extra tech-y, I can do that with my watch or phone.

2. A negligible amount for a vendor on a festival.

3. Not a problem on a festival. Booths tend to be manned by two persons because of other safety factors anyway, so staff stealing isn't an issue, and any organised criminality on a festival is usually limited to (relatively) low risk, high reward crime: pick-pocketing (smartphones in particular).

And especially the ‘takes longer’ argument just shifts the time people are waiting to the charging station, or to their own homes, if they’re charging beforehand.

I think it’s fairly easy to make any change handling easy by making everything cost multiples of $1

Even if some transactions have extra friction such as ID checks for age-restricted purchases, the less intrusive solution is color coded "dumb paper" wristbands.

  have zero insight into how much I’ve already spent 

If every single actual implementation of an idea is bad then maybe the idea wasn’t such a great one either.

Contactless payments with a regular credit card are as far as this idea needed to go, everything else is either a gimmick or a rip-off attempt.

for a $5 processing fee

Except when they have no change (forcing you to find someone willing to change it or wait for them to do so) or refuse to accept a large bill. I often choose to use cash, but it's really not frictionless.

Music venues have some interesting procedures, Alpine valley allows under an oz of weed to be brought in. They have college girls carrying backpacks with 40k in cash. There is an off duty cop directly behind though.

Why do they allow weed to be brought in? Why do they have college girls carrying cash in a backpack? Why so much cash? Why is there an off-duty cop following her around? Isn't an off-duty cop just an ordinary member of the public? If a cop is required shouldn't it be an on-duty cop? If it's somehow a trap to catch drug dealers, how is it meant to work? Why do they limit the amount of weed? And why are they trying to catch drug dealers at all?

I'd guess the "college girls carrying 40k in cash in a backpack" were employees carrying cash out from whatever business/booth they were running and taking it to their bank or head office or whatnot, and the "off-duty" cop behind them was there acting as a security guard; since that's a somewhat common side gig for cops, and in may places, they're still given all the power and authority an "on duty" cop has.

I don't get the connection to the weed (legal or otherwise, it has never been an interest of mine), but perhaps it explains the other bit.

As for the second part, off duty cops would moonlight as security guards. And the college girls could blend in. With the large crowds it was a way keep a low profile for making cash pickups from the dozen different beer/food stations. It's pretty smart. You would never think twice.

It’s a fairly typical internal control for that type of operation.

Spending some cash sometimes increases the complexity of my pocket considerably, which is fine in practice and all, but just feels wrong to part of my brain.

I’d rather have the bracelet solution and don’t have to worry about having 100 coins in my pockets or losing my wallet.

If your card gets stolen however, you go to the bank, fill out a ton of forms, pay a fee for losing your card. Wait a few days for your new card to be delivered in the mail. And then, finally can you pay again. In the meanwhile, you are forced to pay with... cash! Which nobody accepts, because not having a debit card is socially unacceptable in our society.

But try losing your card overseas and see how you feel then... Especially if you have to put a stop on your card... Slow and very painful...

Unless you have a spare you'll be asking a friend to use Western Union for bridge finance.

Depends on the card. With Amex or Diners Club it’s not a problem.

Not sure which country you are talking about but the vast majority of people go to an ATM not the bank to get cash. You still need a debit card to get cash from an ATM.

I haven't been to a bank for getting cash in 10 years. And as you say, ATMs are where you get cash.

Self-checkout person was going "what the hell?" on that one. I also heard her talking to others about being hungry from break being delayed. I gave her the grapes after explaining what I was doing. She was happy, too. Probably did it herself at some point haha. Cashiers trip out to this day if I tell them about that whenever someone is buying a candy bar or something to get cash back. Occasionally, person in line leaves to get a grape. Just one. :)

But I actually assumed just the cash was gone. Either bank or ATM works fine in that situation.

You meant 'more', right?

If you are lucky they will return any unused credit automatic to your credit card without any fees. I would like to know how common that is and what kind of terms and conditions most such system has. My cynicism tells me its about as abusive as they can get away with but to be fair I have not tested it (since I either refuse to prepay on principle or only get the exact amount I have decided to already spend).

https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jwz.o...

Disney does that at Disneyland and Disney World in America: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/plan/my-disney-experience/...

You can also use it to unlock you hotel room and to link to those photographs that are taken of you when you're on the rides.

I watched a presentation on this, and it's actually very interesting how they manage the ride experience so that even during a system outage they can still let people get on the rides.

Makes the lines for drinks move so fast, it’s really outstanding.

I can see value for certain specialist places, like a resort where everyone is wearing swimwear. Or a fetish club.

By introducing a new payment method they can be sure that everyone has access to it and limit it to just the bracelets.

How do they deal with tips?

At the Mirage, tips work just like a credit card transaction would - the bartender has an iPad sitting in front of them and you choose preset options or enter a custom one.

Typically you place your order with the bartender, they'll ring it all up on the terminal, and by the time you've finished tapping your wristband on the reader and choosing a tip amount the bartender is done making your drinks. No hassle with pens and receipts and handing cards around or any of that.

Out of all the festivals, etc, I've been to where they do wristband-based payment instead of accepting cards directly, Avant Gardner / Brooklyn Mirage have the best setup IMO.

Apparently Billfold is the vendor: https://www.billfoldpos.com/

Is there normally hassle? In Europe, and I think this generalisation holds in the countries that commonly pay with a card, the terminal is either mounted on the bar facing the customer, or is portable and left in a similar position.

In any case, there's never a pen, receipts mostly go immediately in the bin unless someone is claiming expenses, and the card never leaves the customer's hand.

So it's little different from a contactless bracelet, except I trust Europay-MasterCard-Visa more han a POS supplier.

It helps that there are no tips. If the number on the screen looks reasonable, I don't touch the terminal at all.

The upside is that the US is at this point better at holding on to the principle of being able to use cash everywhere in addition to other payment options; something that is starting to become a problem in Europe.

Outside of nightlife and restaurants, I almost never deal with paper signatures anymore. Pretty much all retail, etc, does digital signatures and digital receipts, paper receipt upon request.

Its still pretty backwards compared to how most things credit card related work in Europe, but gets the job done and is indeed gradually getting better over here (and, as some of the other posts have mentioned, the saving grace if you don't want to deal with any of this is that cash is almost universally accepted).

I wonder how many make theirs 1234

I have a Swedish bank account, but I still can't use Swish because I have an American phone. It's infuriating.

The only requirements are that you

1) have a Swedish bank account that supports the service (not all banks do), and

2) have Mobilt BankID on your phone.

If you possess a Swedish bank account and are in the Swedish Population Register, you should be able to get Mobilt BankID on your phone (which is, like Swish, an app available on the App Store everywhere) with your Internet bank and then set up Swish.

That sounds like it makes it impossible for any other phone OS to enter the Swedish market.

You need the app to be able to send money though (iOS, android or windows phone).

Yes it is stupid. Unfortunately it is convenient, which is enough for 95% of the population.

But there are still, somehow, banks in Sweden which don't support one or the other. And, well, useful as Swish is, it's not actually obligatory for life in Sweden.

For what it's worth, BankID and Swish also support Windows Phone… for the remainder of 2018, anyway.

Actually, this sounds like it could become a utopia given the right social strategy by the Swedes. They just need to buy beers, lunches, and festival tickets for the kinds of tourists they desire. Then ignore the loud obnoxious ones who will become hungry and irritated and end up leaving early and never coming back to Sweden.

Of course the risk is that it is even more cost effective in the short term for the citizenry to become xenophobic.

I've never been asked for an address when doing a wire transfer.

From what I've heard banks stopped validating the name field a long time ago and you can enter whatever you want.

I don't think they validate it, though, IIRC I've gotten away with simply putting in "Germany".

I don't remember seeing issues in SEPA area, if I just use the IBAN and pay like any normal payment. If I am specifically doing a "foreign payment" some extra fields need to be filled in. That is how I recall the process, last time was 1 year ago though.

you can opt out by not using your gmail account as an addres on your mastercard.

and i believe there’s an explicit opt out as well.

this measures conversion but in a privacy safe way, so it’s actually good thing.

the google implementation that is. i guarantee anyone else doing this (i haven’t heard of such though) is leaking data like crazy

You can withdraw cash by credit card at the ticket desk, to take to the bar and pay for drinks. It's annoying for people like me, occasional visitors from Denmark.

I don't know why they don't have the chip and pin terminal at the bar.

Some men from Macedonia slept opposite my apartment in Copenhagen for a while in the summer. They get enough donations from passers by to keep them supplied with alcohol, and somehow avoid being deported (or return soon after?).

People may also beg even though they have a home.

It's very odd to me that you need to be a citizen to get benefits. California takes care of everyone -- citizen or not.

Thanks to the world renowned U.S social saftey net everyone get looked after!

This is why you for example never see any homeless people in SF or LA. If you happen to stumble upon a rare occurence of a person sleeping on the steets, you can be sure it’s at least a US citizen.

<\irony>

No, but seriously, it is true that Sweden (and social _democracy_ in general) is a way of forbidding citizens to live in extreme poverty, to the benefit of everyone.

This is not imposed on the citizens themselves but rather the state.

We do this by having the state make sure there are provisions in place to TRY to take care of everyone. You might have to be able to navigate the society to some extent though, something that can be especially hard for individuals with mental illnesses or drug addiction (in many ways these are ofc connected).

It can also be true if you are actually not a citizen.

I’m living in Japan where everything is cash, and it’s just such a culture shock to go to a place where I cannot simply pay for everything with cash...

Speaking as a Swedish native who lived in japan for years

I believe inside of Tokyo almost all the machines also support a variety of languages now, but there might be a scattered few with only Japanese.

It actually IS a Utopia, by Thomas More's original definition; a society that appears idyllic and perfectly organised on the surface, but is only maintained in that state by everyone doing what they're supposed to do. And that is achieved by enforcing total compliance through surveillance and coercion.

The point of the book is that the reader really wouldn't want to live in Utopia once he understands the misery it requires.

The store no longer has to go to the bank to get heaps of change

The store no longer has to take money to the bank

The store will have no money on premises so less of a target for robbery

The store will have no money on premises so no having to trust employees not to take some.

Nothing to account. Just read the total.

In almost every way, as long as there are enough customers it's a win for the store. Many customers love it too. Most of my western friends visiting Japan get annoyed they can't go cashless in Japan because they're used to being cashless where they are from.

I did run into my first no-cash accepted store here recently. It will be interesting to see how it goes in Japan as they are more privacy oriented.

I agree with all the issues of going cashless. It scares the crap out of me, especially when traveling. But, I can't see it not happening relatively quickly.

Edit: Please comment if things are different in your non-Swedish country (considering Europe here, but curious about other countries of course).

I see no need for using Vipps or ApplePay. I place my bank card on the terminal and it is paid, with no fees. If it is over $20 I have to enter the pin. Super simple.. Me and my wife actually laught when we find coins in old jackets, because we haven’t seen coins in months. Almost forgot how they look and feel.

Coercion: "To force to act or think in a certain way by use of pressure, threats, or intimidation; compel."

So if I'm down the street and cash won't let me get on a bus, the movie tickets can't be purchased, food can't be bought etc. There's the basis for pressure. Can't buy food without card, ok you go hungry. There's the threat. I'm sure that intimidation will turn up in a lot of little ways. Public ostracism / humiliation (even at subtle levels) due to not having a card could be seen as real enough to count. The network effects of not having a card will likely cause serious inconvenience.

If "you can't do anything without a card" then you are compelled to get one.

Sounds like coercion to me.

...

But thinking about currencies and economy in europe is always kinda doomed because the euro is double-locked. No national economic policy actually has a meaning since at most your gonna leverage some power to influence the ECB, but you're never gonna be the one to actually decide. So there is a complicated combat to do cross european countries saying ok we have to re-found the mission and the organization of the ECB, the relationship with national economies. How do we want to keep down inflation: just maintain growth in face of other world economies that actually grow or make ourselves more independent, what do we do when countries have diverging interests, how do we make sure it's regulated and we keep control on it?

I would vouch for a system where euro exists but is restricted to cross-country corporate business and easy traveling: common credit card system where you can transparently withdraw any participating national money at the current nation negociated exchange rate (eg federating by having a star topology instead of a complete graph for exchange rates: "we treat all the others the same"). Additionally the BCE should have a second decision instance (two-chamber-like) basically being the european budget commission but elected by people, not chosen by governments, to ease cross-country political action. And on a more technical/practical level we have to rethink about wire transfers. I don't know much about how SEPA works but it's probably interesting to take a look.

It also looks a little like those countries with their own national currency but also everyone accepting USD. Tourists can carry dollars, lose a little by unfavorable rates at every payment, maybe end up with change in the local currency to use in the next shop. I remember that on vacation in Uzbekistan.

[#] This is a well-known social/evolution dynamic: group selection. Bees suicide when attacking: individually it's a weak behavior, but globally it makes the group more resilient. The balance between cooperation and competition is a balance between individual power and group power. Europe is a group of groups, so the balance is weirder but having too strong cooperation at the top level (eg enforcing a common economic policy) will weaken countries. But only some countries because of non-homogeneity, thus destabilizing everything by lowering local national resilience (to specific local concerns, which do exist). So i believe we have to accept that we need slightly stronger countries to make the european union stick together.

The danger is that society as a whole ends up making sub-optimal decisions because each person is (selfishly / rationally) choosing to avoid these extra costs.

Powerful entities (even those falling short of absolute monopolies) probably get away with a lot more societal harm than they would if we were more aware of this "coercion of convenience".

It does seem to be a bad deal for tourists however. I'm surprised that companies are apparently so quick to ditch traditional credit cards.

Same thing here.

I would guess some surveillance is involved in terms of audits of banks, but it might not fit the technical definition of surveillance.

There are a myriad of ways Sweden can and probably is enforcing cashless trends through surveillance and coercion. Encouraging banks and retailers to refuse cash services, as referenced in the article, is likely done by the government. This enhances their ability to track and control all monetary transactions for any number of reasons (nefarious or otherwise).

Can we, as a society, just stop saying that?

I just used contactless payments on my credit card the entire time and never had any issues. To me it seems more like Swish-specific issues rather than cashless in general? However, if some people are disadvantaged by different cashless options then that is a definite issue.

Same as swish but no need for Swedish banks nor BankID.

I use Swish extensively because it works for giving kids cash remote and at the same time buying a car. If I would stumple on someone who is unable to use it it would be troublesome, but I think most swedes would break their neck to solve it anyhow in that case. If they know they have the possibility.

Bank transactions between countries have always been a burden, I so hope that we will see big change in the near future.

Regarding the article saying that if central banks become irrelevant due to cash going fully out of favor: that’s such BS. Deposits would just become credits from central banks to lending banks private or not so that customers could get credit and pay for goods digitally. No exchange of paper money is ever needed.

There’s already orders of magnitude more money in asset valuations than there is paper money to back them in the world economy why should we hold back because we are so fixated on paper currency. With the advent of token based contactless payment services like how Apple Pay works the future is secure payments without cash and those burndensome coins I have to handle while getting Che he after a purchase.

Lastly, if things go digital fully it could mean that securing and auditing and processing could be even cheaper and could allow for entrants that can still profit on transaction processing but at much lower rates than the current incumbents charge retailers.

It’s the opposite here in Germany. Some places have support for contactless payment, take credit cards, etc., but most even if they do prefer you to pay with cash as it’s cheaper for them. There’s also this German only banking alliance where they have put forth a EC card that has very low to no fees for participating entities as the funding and processing is all done in Germany amongst the member financial institutions. But my N26 account doesn’t offer one so I’m out of luck there.

The thing is the incumbents both state and private want to keep the status quo alive: the Mastercards of the world want to keep fees high and central banks want to keep control of interest rates by influencing the supply of currency in the market. I think both can still be done without cash and it leaves the possibility that with time and good legislation and technological improvement and some enterprising people there might become solutions that take the friction of paying for and make the settling accounts and such cheaper for all parties involved.

It is basically a payment overlay on top of whatever technology runs in the mobile devices. If tomorrow the dominant mobile OS is Foobar, there will be Swish for it and things just keep on working. It is not tied to a US or Chinese megacorporation, so there is no risk of geopolitically-influenced political decisions ruining the show, like those threatening SWIFT, for example. Swish works just fine inside Sweden, for Swedes.

All countries should have the equivalent of Swish and then make them interoperate if sending money to another country.

I can think of one thing why Swish and "e-krona" is not a good idea: if the lights go out temporarily, it will be difficult to pay for something (although figuring this out is a technical problem -- the payments could be queued in the terminals or something).

If the lights go out forever and we enter the quiet apocalypse, then there is very little use for cash either, aside from use as tinder or drying shoes, and plastic notes will not work for those either.

How could there ever be a new mobile OS in this scenario? If stores rely on Swish, consumers have to use a mobile OS that supports Swish, so nobody can enter the mobile OS market (except if they pay Swish to provide a port for their OS on day 1).

It's common for a new product rollout (whatever it is) to have discussions with different companies beforehand, this is how e.g. games magically appear on the market around the same time when a new game console is launched. The game studios get their hands on development hardware and documentation before anyone else.

So I don't see Swish being any kind of blocker for anyone wanting to roll out a new mobile OS in Sweden. Whoever wants to come in first contacts Swish, they do the legal paperwork and then contract someone to build the app.

And it's not like Swish is the only option to pay in stores. It's not that common, in fact. Paying with a debit card is the most common thing.

I'm a Norwegian in Australia.

We've got Paypass / Paywave just about everywhere here. With Samsung Pay supporting both, I don't bring my wallet out most days. I'm sure a lot of the readers support Apple Pay as well.

Of course we can still use cash if we want to, but tapping is just easy these days.

edit: auto complete filled in butcoin, corrected. Not sure how that got in my dictionary!

Joking aside, sure, crypto would be a great solution if they were already using it. They weren't however, and trying to introduce someone half-drunk and in a party vibe to crypto is not a good idea.

If I had asked them to use crypto afterwards I would just have imposed a lot of extra work on them, which wouldn't be nice considering they did me a service by lending to me and blindly trusting me to send it back.

Getting set up on an exchange is challenging these days, at least in the US. I didn't know if there were better options that people there in Scandinavia were using, sounds like no.

It's sad, because once you have crypto in an exchange it is super simple to send to an address, and the current exchange rate is easy to see. Seems like it solves your problems in that no one would need to use one of the different and incompatible banking systems. I'm sort of surprised the cost of signing up for a crypto exchange makes the banking system still a consideration.

It's an interesting place you are in, highly mobile within Europe, with the financial system getting more complicated when you travel within it.

Crypto's could do this. They just aren't set up as easy right now. I'm pointing at bitcoin etc. They are also slow. I can tap my MasterCard contactless card/phone and pay for coffee and the merchant is happy. I've had bitcoin take >30 minutes to transfer. Unacceptably slow.

In my EU country, there are already six banks that let you do this, and I doubt we're pioneers.

In the example provided I’m sending my pal BTC for some shared purchase because there’s no cash.

My friend didn’t have a BTC address / wallet or whatever, now they do, and I’ve just transferred them 0.0028 BTC to cover my share of lunch.

Now what?

Canada we have Interac, which is mostly everywhere, but we also have cash, and three or four credit networks (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and sometimes Discover). There are only really three physical modes of operation, and they all have a time and a place: Tap card 95% of the time, insert and use pin when fraud detection gets a funny feeling, and use cash when all else fails (because sometimes that means you have to call up your creditor's fraud department and let them know you're just on a roadtrip, your card hasn't been stolen).

I don't think requiring a smartphone to accomplish what chip & pin and NFC cards do just fine is an upgrade.

Then these people talk about making state payment processors. What happens when fraud prevention completely stops you from being able trade any money? Do they drive out to fix your problem on the spot? How on earth could they expect that to work out well?

Agreed. Though I also don't think that this was suggested anywhere in the article?

If you want a mapping to your situation, your wallet could have an additional card reading "Bank of Canada" next to your Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover cards.

Even though the situation in Europe in fragmented, it's a lot cheaper for merchants.

Så jävla enig alltså!

Fy fan för detta inskränkta, ofria land! Jag avundas norrmän, daner, och finnar för att de slipper Rosenbad.

Du, och alla andra skandinaver vet att genomsnittssvensken... har sina svårigheter.

Ser fram mot min årliga skridskosemester i Norge.

Very small businesses might only accept MobilePay or cash (e.g. come and see an obscure band perform in Copenhagen, the ticket, cloakroom and bar might have these choices.)

Larger places offer it as an alternative. The canteens at Copenhagen University, for example.

You don't have to use SWIFT... you can do Paypal, Western union etc.. too.

For Swedes.. Swish is god send. I lost my credit card once at a train and had no cash. I was at a hospital out of town with my son. I was able to Swish to a doctor and then get cash from him.