{"id":18933,"date":"2016-03-16T15:26:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T20:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18933"},"modified":"2016-03-16T15:26:06","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T20:26:06","slug":"sweden-minister-says-cashless-society-not-possible-elderly-disabled-people-blamed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18933","title":{"rendered":"Sweden Minister Says Cashless Society “Not Possible”; Elderly, Disabled People Blamed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sweden Minister Says Cashless Society “Not Possible”; Elderly, Disabled People Blamed<\/a><\/h3>\n
It was just a little over a week ago when\u00a0we reported<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0Sweden had begun a 5-year countdown to becoming a cashless utopia<\/strong>.<\/div>\n
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As\u00a0The Local reported<\/a>, \u201ccash transactions today represent no more than two percent of the value of all payments made in Sweden, [and that estimate]\u00a0will drop to below 0.5 percent<\/strong>\u00a0within the next five years.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Visa, Swedes use debit cards three times more than other Europeans.\u00a0Even the homeless accept electronic payments<\/strong>. \u201cThe spread of debit cards has had a profound effect even on the street level with fruit and veg traders and even buskers and retailers of homeless magazines accepting cards or electronic payments using the popular Swedish smartphone app Swish,\u201d The Local goes on to note.<\/p>\n

As 65-year-old Stefan Wikberg\u00a0told The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0in December, using SMS and mobile card readers effectively helped him climb out of homelessness after losing his IT job. He sells magazines for Situation Stockholm, a charitable organization and his sales rose 30% once he went digital. \u201cNow people can\u2019t get away,<\/strong>\u201d he said. \u201cWhen they say, \u2018I don\u2019t have change,\u2019 I tell them they can pay with card or even by SMS.\u201d<\/p>\n

As The Times goes on to write, churches and museums now prefer cashless payments and \u201cat more than half of the branches of the country\u2019s biggest banks, including SEB, Swedbank, Nordea Bank and others, no cash is kept on hand, nor are cash deposits accepted<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This may all sound rather surreal to some, but for Swedes it’s not only normal, but desirable.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNo one uses cash,\u201d said Hannah Ek, a 23-year-old student at\u00a0the University of Gothenburg. \u201cI think our generation can live without it<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sweden Minister Says Cashless Society “Not Possible”; Elderly, Disabled People Blamed It was just a little over a week ago when\u00a0we reported\u00a0that\u00a0Sweden had begun a 5-year countdown to becoming a cashless utopia. As\u00a0The Local reported, \u201ccash transactions today represent no more than two percent of the value of all payments made in Sweden, [and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[1035,1034,124,3284,534,1921,3471,771,12991,4318,1939],"class_list":["post-18933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-cash","tag-cashless-society","tag-central-banks","tag-larry-summers","tag-monetary-policy","tag-new-york-times","tag-riksbank","tag-sweden","tag-zero-interest-rates-policy","tag-zerohedge","tag-zirp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18934,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18933\/revisions\/18934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}