Oh it's easy: they don't use Visa / Mastercard, but their own domestic system called Swish, which is much cheaper for businesses and of course completely free for individuals.

Similar instant payment systems have really blossomed across the world, especially in recent years.

> Oh it's easy

Can you use it without local ID/phone and with foreign bank account?

No because you need BankID which is issued by your bank and to get BankID you need a Swedish bank and a personnummer. You can use a foreign phone number with Swish but some banks don't allow it (or only allow some countries, e.g. finland).

A lot of stores have minimums if you want to pay with Swish, the more common answer to how we pay for small amounts like that is... we just use our cards like any other purchase.

I assume there's no minimum there (as I haven't encountered such a requirement in Hungary for some time, nor in Spain)

The minimums vary from country to country, it really depends on the fee structure.

Here in New Zealand, shops pay a fixed monthly fee for the payment terminal ($30-$60 per month. That includes the SIM card and data plan) and can make unlimited debit card transactions for free. Consumers don't pay either, so we all got used to making stupidly small payments with a card.

Even with credit cards and contactless, shops are only charged a fixed 1.5% fee. There never a per-transaction fixed cost, so there is no reason to enforce any kind of minimum. I think the smallest I've ever done was 35 cents.

These days, it's close to impossible to find anywhere that doesn't accept cards. Even small stalls at the farmers market will have a terminal. I haven't needed to carry cash for 10+ years.

In the UK most small shops had this same 'minimum spend' requirement for card. It disappeared a few years ago (maybe during Covid) and now I haven't come across minimum spend in a long time. That was one of the last things that made me always keep some cash on hand. Now, I genuinely cannot remember the last time I used cash - it's been at least 2-3 years, probably longer.

That was a thing in Sweden as well, but it's illegal to charge an extra fee when using cards since 2010. So to answer the question, everyone just uses cards even for small purchases, and often those "cards" aren't physical cards but Apple or Google Pay on the phone.

https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...

If you ignore supermarkets, basically no place sells stuff in that low of an amount. Using Stripe as an example, transaction fees are 1.5%+1.8kr. I’m hard pressed to find a place that sells items with a price below 20kr, and even cheap crap from china costs at least that when buying online. So unless your business has an unexpectedly large amount of low price transactions, it’s not a big issue.

We just use our cards.

You're not going to find a baguette for less than 5 euros anyway

Not sure what you are talking about. A baguette is ~1€, same for a croissant or a chocolatine. Maybe 1.10 or 1.20 depending on the place. I do it all the time. It forces me to have the cash otherwise I need to take another random item I don't really need.

At least in Denmark, people are fine paying and shops are fine receiving 10DKK (cheap loaf of bread) or whatever on a card.

I have paid 0.5DKK on a card when I've forgotten to ask beforehand for a plastic bag, and the shopkeeper cares to make me pay after.