Sweden is the most cashless country in the world, with the total value of cash payments totalling less than 2 percent of the country’s GDP.
As fewer retailers and banks in the state are accepting and issuing cash, we ask why Sweden is taking this route and what the benefits are.
According to Sweden’s central bank, the proportion of cash payments in the retail sector dropped from 40 percent in 2010 to 15 percent in 2016.
“In the not-too-distant future, Sweden may become a society in which cash is no longer generally accepted,” it said.
Cashless payments are being introduced more widely, to different reactions.
Last year shopping centre in Gothenburg installed cash-free toilets, which only allowed customers to pay with their mobile phones.
“Toilets are a big part of our business,” says CoinCode’s Christer Granath. “Coins have a cost – you need to have someone to collect them, you need to store and bank the cash, and there is always a risk of theft.”
Niklas Arvidsson, a professor at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology, said that going cashless worked in Sweden due to trust in institutions and interest in new technologies.
“Swedes tend to trust banks, we trust institutions… people are not afraid of the sort-of ‘Big Brother’ issues or fraud connected to electronic payment,” he said.
Arvidsson predicted a continuing in the trend, with the use of cash most likely be reduced to “a very marginal payment form” by 2020.
The route to a cashless society is having a ripple effect, changing different spending behaviour.
Consumers are able to easily buy a copy of Faktum, Sweden’s equivalent of the Big Issue, by using portable card readers provided by the Swedish startup iZettle.
Not everyone, however, is convinced. Bjorn Eriksson, formerly national police commissioner and president of Interpol said that the lack of cash was affecting more vulnerable groups.
“I like cards. I’m just angry because about a million people can’t cope with cards: the elderly, former convicts, tourists, immigrants. The banks don’t care because [these groups] are not profitable,” he said.