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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday December 27 2015, @11:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the i-bet-the-last-$10-in-my-wallet dept.

The New York Times is reporting that Sweden is getting close to eliminating cash as a method of payment:

Parishioners text tithes to their churches. Homeless street vendors carry mobile credit-card readers. Even the Abba Museum, despite being a shrine to the 1970s pop group that wrote "Money, Money, Money," considers cash so last-century that it does not accept bills and coins.

Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic.

This tech-forward country, home to the music streaming service Spotify and the maker of the Candy Crush mobile games, has been lured by the innovations that make digital payments easier. It is also a practical matter, as many of the country's banks no longer accept or dispense cash. [...]

Bills and coins now represent just 2 percent of Sweden's economy, compared with 7.7 percent in the United States and 10 percent in the euro area.

But, as anyone with a brain can predict:

Not everyone is cheering. Sweden's embrace of electronic payments has alarmed consumer organizations and critics who warn of a rising threat to privacy and increased vulnerability to sophisticated Internet crimes. Last year, the number of electronic fraud cases surged to 140,000, more than double the amount a decade ago, according to Sweden's Ministry of Justice.

My take: With cash, identify theft and credit card fraud becomes more difficult. But more importantly, I like the anonymity of cash. It lets those of us who pay too much in taxes cheat on sales tax by buying expensive things in a tax-free state when we visit. I also like using cash to tip underpaid servers at restaurants so they don't have to report that portion of their gratuity. But there is a civil liberties element to it as well. The government has no business knowing or being able to know where I spend my money or how much I spend.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 27 2015, @12:20PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 27 2015, @12:20PM (#281420) Journal

    There really is an upside. As a child, and even as a young man, I sometimes ran out of money, and couldn't account for where I spent it all. With everything available online, anyone, even children, can click on their account, and be reminded that they spent a dollar here, and a buck fifty there. So, THAT's where my ten dollar allowance went this week!

    But, that really is the only "upside" that I can think of.

    Unfortunately, I have little room to talk. I was forced into direct deposit a couple years ago. In and of itself, that's not a "bad" thing - my money is in my account each and every Friday morning, at 12:01. The "bad" part of that is, often times, I just don't go to the bank or the ATM to draw any money out. I might draw cash money out one week, and carry that cash in my pocket for two weeks of more, while paying for my purchases with the card. Big deal - I drew cash out, but I've left a plastic trail that any idiot investigator can follow. There's no need for some potential enemy, such as the government, to employ a high caliber investigator, when some dummy with an IQ of 80 can just punch up all my purchases on a screen.

    "No, Sir, I don't think that Joe Brown was in Schenectady at all on Friday - he was making tourist trap purchases up and down the California coast from the previous Monday until the following Friday." (HA! Little do they know that I sent a homeless lady to California to lay a false trail for me, while I was doing the governor's wife!)

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Sunday December 27 2015, @02:14PM

    by Francis (5544) on Sunday December 27 2015, @02:14PM (#281433)

    Credit cards do allow that, but it's hardly a substitute for paying attention when you're spending money. If you're not aware enough of what you're doing with your money, then you're probably spending money that you don't want to on things you don't really want or you've got a crazy complicated system for getting discounts everywhere.

    As far as cash goes, we've had these things called receipts for quite a while now and apart from vending machinese and the like, you can usually get a receipt without too much hassle.

    Point is that while credit cards do make it easier to track money you've already spent, they don't make budgeting any easier and really make it easier to spend money you don't have or have allocated to something more important. I will always use cash for discretionary spending, even if the "use" is taking it from my pocket and placing it into an envelop to signify that I've just used my CC to buy something from my discretionary funds.

  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday December 27 2015, @10:16PM

    by Nuke (3162) on Sunday December 27 2015, @10:16PM (#281516)

    There really is an upside. ... I sometimes ran out of money, and couldn't account for where I spent it all. With everything available online, anyone ...can click on their account, and be reminded that they spent a dollar here, and a buck fifty there.

    Doesn't work like that. With cash, such people spend until the cash in their pocket runs out. It is not physically possible to get into debt if they pay only with cash. With credit cards however, people spend until they hit their credit limit, which to a greater or lesser degree is money they do not even have, so into debt.

    Most of such people don't give a shit where the money went, only where the next money is coming from.