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"If you have control of the servers belonging to Visa or MasterCard, you have control of Sweden," Engström says.
It is hard to argue that you cannot trust the government when the government isn't really all that bad. This is the problem facing the small but growing number of Swedes anxious about their country's rush to embrace a cash-free society.
Most consumers already say they manage without cash altogether, while shops and cafes increasingly refuse to accept notes and coins because of the costs and risk involved. Until recently, however, it has been hard for critics to find a hearing.
"The Swedish government is a rather nice one, we have been lucky enough to have mostly nice ones for the past 100 years," says Christian Engström, a former MEP for the Pirate Party and an early opponent of the cashless economy.
"In other countries there is much more awareness that you cannot trust the government all the time. In Sweden it is hard to get people mobilised."
There are signs this might be changing. In February, the head of Sweden's central bank warned that Sweden could soon face a situation where all payments were controlled by private sector banks.
The Riksbank governor, Stefan Ingves, called for new legislation to secure public control over the payments system, arguing that being able to make and receive payments is a "collective good" like defence, the courts, or public statistics.
[...] "Most citizens would feel uncomfortable to surrender these social functions to private companies," he said.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:33AM (1 child)
We have the same push here.. all the benefits that belong to it (according to the shop organisations that push it). The one fact that they seem to forget continuously is that on a monthly basis one or two banks (you know, the big ones) have at least one or two times problems with their payment infrastructure which causes these cashless payment methods to fail.
Cash has also lots of other benefits. Last month my bank suspended my payment account because they didn't know where some money was coming from (I paid out some cryptos). I was glad I had a few hundred euros in cash at home to cover basic grocery purchases and such.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @10:34AM
What he said. It's also the reason to keep one's finances well diversified, even if it costs a little more. There's nothing more suicidal than the all-eggs-in-one-basket 'deals' that banks offer. It only takes one idiot in one call centre to press the wrong button and suddenly you have no access to cash, no credit, no insurance and you're in mortgage or rent arrears. (In recent years I've encountered two such idiots; one who issued a banker's draft for a car loan and then forgot to credit it to my account, and one who cancelled my credit card - irrevocably, I might add - instead of renewing it.)