The interesting component to this is what happens when the payment system $hits the bed.
3 weeks ago last friday and saturday in sydney the communications system underlying about 50% of all financial transactions (taxi card readers, many ATMs, many businesses) collapsed with the result that if you didn't have cash you couldn't make an exchange.
How robust do people really think these systems are? I certainly have no faith in a perfectly digital future (despite being heavily invested in it) - we are but one solar flare away from behaving like barbarians.
Continuing to use cash should be a national security issue, just like for instance, using open source software is starting to be in some places. Any country that wants to get rid of cash is just making it easy for future rival nations to cripple its economy with a hack or two.
But why couldn't the government just keep cash on hand in some central location (eg. Fort Knox in USA) and in case of a total system failure have a plan to quickly distribute it across the country. I mean if Amazon can get me socks in 48 hours, I'm pretty sure the govt of nearly any 1st world country could get cash to central repositories in a matter of hours with enough planning.
To whom you'd distribute that cash? If you have some service that can tell that I should have $1000 and which can record that you've given me $1000 which should later be deducted from my account #XYZ, then it implies that you have a fully functional e-payment system which can service most people, so you don't need the cash; and if the e-payment systems aren't functioning, then you can't do this distribution of cash.
Helicopter cash? So you just randomly give people stacks of cash? Sounds ridiculous and dangerous. Why not just let people continue using cash? Problem solved, if mobile payment systems are hacked and go down, people will still have some emergency cash in their wallet and will be fine for couple of days until gov fixes the hack.
Happens in Norway as well some times, but then it automatically switches to a backup system, meaning it just checks that the card is valid and asks for a signature. Then the transactions goes through in bulk when the system is back up. Takes a little bit longer, but it works.
Definitely a concern, but some of the payment methods are independent. Most payments in Sweden are done by card. If that system is down, it should not affect Swish, which is the second most popular way of making payments.
A larger Internet outage is a concerning scenario though.
It's been a while since I lived in Sweden, but does Swish not tie to a credit card? If so, it would be no more able to process payments than credit cards, as the payment processor is still involved.
It will only work if it uses direct bank transfers, in which case an outage at your bank or in clearing houses (which is no less likely than an outage at a large payment provider) would take out both debit cards, Swish, and any other means of transfer.
(Note for outsiders: MasterCard Debit is the most common card in Sweden from what I recall)
I am only intimately familiar with one EU country's banking transaction infrastructure, but there it is the case that when one (major) creditcard provider has a network outage the debit network is also down.
In Belgium the payment processor crashes every year around X-mas. Can't use your card in the shop doing X-mas shopping, no cash from the ATM. Fun times and every year in the news :)
I think the systems are pretty robust by any measure. I've never had a card reader in the Netherlands fail and had to pay with cash before. I have seen ATM's out of order a couple of times though.
If the payment networks all go down, I imagine you'd also have trouble withdrawing cash from an ATM too. What's the alternative? Cash under your mattress for a rainy day? Do you think the value of cash would be stable enough to be useful in this solar flare scenario? I think we'll have bigger issues...
The alternative is cash in the wallet, not having to go to immediately withdraw as that is obviously also down. That is, using cash regularly.
It doesn't even have to be a total credit card blackout, like it has happened a few times in Denmark in recent years. It can be minor fuckups, like your bank accidentally cancelling your card, or shutting it down due to something they consider fradulent activity.
I have seen at least 2 total payment blackouts in the past few years here in Denmark (a virtually cashless society, with very strict laws limiting cash use), have 12 credit cards at home from back when my bank thought I wanted a new one every month (with each sent card cancelling my current one, without notice, before I got the replacement), and friends have had their card cancelled without notice due to undescribed "potentially fradulent activity". It of course takes weeks to get a new one, and during this period you cannot even use an ATM.
All of these are simple errors that will happen again, and again, and again. They shouldn't leave you unable to make trades from your own wealth. You shouldn't rely on others to be able to manage what you own.
Cash isn't inconvenient with electronic cash counting registers. It's fast, simple, and it works regardless of external factors. Oh, and fewer people tracing your every step in this world is nice.
Most, by a wide margin. I checked with my bank, and they seem to have ten offices in the whole country with cash. I happen to live "only" 7 km or so from one (and I live in the center of a big (by Swedish standards) city), but many would have some 500 km of travelling to do to get to one of these offices.
Banks in the region generally are moving towards cashless branches. You go to a branch to handle agreements, disputes, loans, investments - it's a location for sales and customer service.
If you need to withdraw or deposit cash, that's done in ATMs, the branch generally has one, but if the card services are down then the ATM will be as well.
> I've never had a card reader in the Netherlands fail and had to pay with cash before.
This is extra amusing because there was a major outage this year in the card payment infrastructure of the Netherlands. It's possible you missed it, but only if you didn't try to pay anywhere.
