This story is from Who Needs Cash? an episode of Business Daily on BBC World Service. It was presented by Rob Young and produced by Vicki Broadbent. To listen to more episodes of Business Daily, please click here. Adapted by Sarah Keating.
“I think if cash disappears all over, it will be a very big problem… I’m afraid it is going too fast… so it’s a big concern if you have that feeling that society is not for you.”
Maijlis Jonsson is a 73-year-old living in the centre of Sweden’s capital Stockholm. She leads an active life with her friends, travelling around the city and meeting in coffee shops. However, one issue keeps cropping up that causes her stress.
Sweden has been steadily moving towards a completely cashless society for a number of years. Cash is now used in less than one in five of all cash transactions in stores – half the number as five years ago. The country has banned notes and coins on buses, many tourist attractions take plastic-only transactions.
The law says shops can refuse to accept cash. So many stores now have signs reading, “no cash, please.” Life can be hard for those unwilling or unable to embrace the changes.
Not everyone hates cash
Maijlis Jonsson is one such person. She must go to a bank in order to pay her friend back for a train ticket bought digitally. “Usually the fee is 79 krona which is about $9,” she says. “It is an awful lot of money… of course they always say you can do it for free on the internet but it’s a problem… some [of us] don’t know how to do it.”
She tries to pay for a cup of coffee at a café but the cashier refuses. “He didn’t want to have my money so I have to pay by card,” she says, adding that, in any case, ATMs are becoming harder and harder to come by in Stockholm.
Niklas Arvidsson, professor at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Sweden’s leading expert on the payment system, acknowledges that certain demographics are in danger of being left behind, like the elderly.
“We’ve also got a problem with smaller merchants in rural areas where perhaps the telecom systems are not working,” he says.
(Credit: Getty Images)
Some denominations of Indian bank notes were discontinued in 2016 leading to long queues of people waiting to withdraw money (Credit: Getty Images)
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