Swede here, yep this has been the message from the government.
The reason why we pushed so hard into cashless business in the first place was a multipart reason.
In the early 2000s cash transports were semi regularly robbed, these transports were done in armored vans, but without police escorts or even armed personal.
It was a regular bit on the news, “another high value transport hit by robbers and blown up.”
Then businesses started transitioning from cash to reduce the risk of robberies.
Then the government started pushing harder toward a cashless society.
Services like Klarna and Swish (Swedish version of Cash App), combined with electronic ID using BankID (ID service owned by the major banks in Sweden, terrible onwership, but a decent execution)
And now with the increased threats against Sweden, we need to migrate back to using cash more.
I have reserve cash in my wallet, I have carried it for about a year, but have not used actual cash in any regular capacity for more than 15 years or so…
The really annoying thing here is that here in Sweden, carrying cash is now so unusual that it can be seen as suspicious by the police.
That is fucking ridiculous, but it is a reality.
How interesting. I don’t live in Sweden, so this is all completely new to me. Thanks for the perspective!
As an expat, when I’m back home, some places does not accept cash (the bus didn’t accept card either), has that changed?
And forget the checks, they were like abolished in the nineties.
Also Swedish, and I haven’t seen cash in years. I don’t even know what our current banknotes look like.
Kika gärna på riksbankens webbsida, de nya är ganska fina, men känns som en ny valuta jämfört med de gamla:
https://www.riksbank.se/sv/betalningar--kontanter/sedlar--mynt/sedlar/giltiga-sedlar/
Jag saknar Selma och Linné…
Det är sant, de är väldigt fina. På ett sätt lite synd att man inte har behov för dem längre, men Swish osv. är ju så jäkla mycket smidigare.
Aside from any possible technical difficulties or failures with digital money, there’s always one obvious vulnerability…
ELECTRICITY
People rely on it every single day, but what happens when the lights go out? Well you can’t exactly process digital transactions can you?
It really seems ridiculous to me that anyone, let alone an entire country, would try to abandon physical cash altogether. If a disaster hits or a war sparks off and the power grid goes down, people’s digital wallets are fucked.
So yeah, they’re right to suggest people keep at least some physical cash either on them or put away for emergencies at least.
Thank god
