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.
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.