Cashless Sweden And Coin Collecting

---being forced to''unlock'' grocery carts has been a common practice here in Germany for at least 25 years. Back then, you usually need a 1 Deutsche Mark coin. After changing to the Euro it's usually a 50 Cent or 1 Euro coin.
However, companys have come up with a PR idea long ago. They are giving out plastic chips in the form of the coins for free which have their logos. It's a way to advertise your company, business or even political party.
People here in Germany rarely use actual coins in shopping carts anymore. But the shopping carts still end up in the buggy coral...because we are Germans.

---Aldi accepts payments with bank or debit cards here in Germany only since a few years (maybe four or five). Before that, it was cash only. Since last year, Aldi also accepts credit cards. But credit cards are rarely used in Germany anyway. Perhaps 3% of all payments. If Germans use cards it's bank/debit.
At Aldi (and most other supermarkets), I would say 50-60% of payments are still made in cash, even large shopping bills. Remember, the 50 Euro banknote is the most common of all banknotes in the Eurozone.

---As X2an has already mentioned Sweden is most likely singled out because it's the most populous of the Scandinavian countries. AND, it's the only one of them were the number of banknotes in circulation is actually going down.
From 2014 to 2015, the number of banknotes in circulation increased in Denmark by 3,2% (163,5 million to 169,3 million!)

---Apple is most likely to weasel a way into the cashless payment system to get a share of the profit

You get all of it back when you return it properly. That's the smart thing about the system. And more than a quarter? Please tell me you found a way to make Americans interested in half dollar and dollar coins...

Just one of the many reasons cash will slowly fade away is intercontinental trading. Due to the way things are today with trading between countries, using cash is just not practical. In the near future you'll be able to go to Canada, Mexico, China, Africa, etc. and not have to worry about what moneys are needed. Your Credit of Debit card will do all the work. You want to buy something. Simple. A piece of plastic will make it easy. No need to wonder what you have to pay for anything. It will pop up on your cell phone as what it is in the money your used to. People will just not have to use cash for anything. Keep looking around and you'll see this is happening already.

We have Aldi (German company) supermarkets in my area, and I always make sure I get my quarter back! (actually you get back a quarter from a different cart).

Actually, quite some children here have this as a 'side job'. They take your shopping cart back to the stash for you and keep the change as their reward.




I actually keep all the 1 and 2 cent coins I get during my visits to the Euro zone, because they are so useless: you basically can't even spend them in The Netherlands and Finland anymore, for example. I don't come there too often but I still have quite a few kilograms of both.

I jump back to the future of coin collecting. I see not so much new collectors coming in as the prices of basic stuff are going down. Also many coin collectors have started to look more banknotes here in Finland (marks and euros).

As a world type coin collector things are good for me, I can get loads of stuff at a low prices from local internet sources, Facebook etc.I have started to sell some stuff I think will decrease in value over time, commems and some banknotes I have accumulated. I also send old German marks or other pre euros for companies like http://www.euromoney24.com and http://www.leftovercurrency.com as they still exchange them via mail. They pay more than local collectors of world coins. Good thing is also that those coins and banknotes are then gone, so in theory prices in numismatic market may go up if huge amount of that basic stuff is destroyed.

My guess is that the media concentrates on Sweden because Björn Ulvaeus is such a vocal advocate of cashless society, and he is well known internationally.

But, as you said, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland may all have similar percentages of transactions done electronically, but only Sweden is actively reducing it's banknotes.

http://www.cb.is/library/Myndir---I...nt_enskt.png
Historically, Iceland for nearly 2 decades had only about 1% of it's GDP in banknotes. But that was more the result of runaway inflation. They simply couldn't print enough banknotes or create new denominations fast enough to keep up with inflation. But since the banking crisis, Iceland is circulating more than 2.5% of GDP in banknotes. Still a very low percentage compared to USA, Canada, Australia or EU.

Even after the massive reduction in banknotes, Sweden is still not down to 1% of GDP. Sweden has a 4 trillion SEK GDP, and the number of 500kr banknotes in circulation are worth 40.987 billion SEK. So that one important denomination alone is roughly 1% of Swedish GDP.

A report released by the Riksbank a few weeks ago contained on fact that I found surprising:
http://www.riksbank.se/Documents/Ra...0831_eng.pdf (page 127)
In 2015 there were 154 million ATM withdrawals for a total of 153 billion SEK. So that is roughly 16 ATM withdrawals per capita for a little less than 1000SEK on average. A similar study in the USA for 2012 came up with 18 withdrawals from an ATM per capita at an average amount of $118. The USA statistics are almost identical to the Swedish statistics.

Of course in USA there is over a trillion and half dollars withdrawn in cash in banks via teller transactions, an action almost entirely missing from Swedish financial transactions. Obviously cash is much more important in the USA. Major articles have suggested doing away with the Benjamins (c-note) as far back as 1976, but if anyone tried actually do it there would be dangerous riots.

http://www.riksbank.se/en/Notes--coins/Statistics/
Latest statistics from the Riksbank suggest 56 billion SEK in valid banknotes circulating in the country, a huge reduction from 75.4 billion SEK at the end of 2014 and 108.5 billion SEK at the end of 2007. That massive reduction makes Sweden totally unique in the world.

The big question is how many new 500kr banknotes will be printed. As we stated above there are 80 million of the old ones in circulation right now. Will it be 20 million or will it be 80 million? If the average ATM withdrawal is 1000kr, then nobody would particularly mind getting five 200kr banknotes.

But how will Swedes feel if all the ATMs having 3000kr maximum withdrawal limits? In the USA a maximum limit per withdrawal is often limited to $800, but that is only because the machines physically can't handle more than forty $20 banknotes, and the $50 or $100 banknote is still fairly rare in an ATM outside of Las Vegas. But the USA is circulating over 8.5 billion physical $20 banknotes, compared to Sweden's twenty five million 200kr banknotes. That is a ratio of about 10:1 on a per capita basis.

Björn Ulvaeus may have done great stuff with ABBA, nowadays he's a completely different person: I won't call him an idiot, but it would be a proper description. Apparently he even can't recall winning the Eurovision Song Contest anymore and apparently he can't recall getting all the cash he got for his music and performances and the benefits it brought him either. That being said, the root cause for him being an anti-cash evangelist is that his son got robbed once. He then decided that cash is the root of all evil and that the world would be a better place if it completely vanished. Talking about overreacting and drawing strange conclusions... As a result, though, the ABBA museum apparently only accepts cashless payments...

I have already encountered many, many occasions in foreign countries where my withdrawal limit was much less than what I wanted to take out. In some cases, it was even less than the equivalent of $100.

What most bankers and politicians usually 'forget' with their strive of a fully government-controlled insight in all payments for their country, is 'the foreigner', like 'the tourist' or more generally, 'the traveler'. You simply can't expect a foreigner to instantly have a topped up Swedish contactless payment card ready when arriving at Arlanda airport. People will need a bank, will need cash, just to get away from their arrival place. This I say as a person who is on the road about half the year and has been to all continents and a huge amount of countries. So yes, there may have been 16 ATM withdrawals per capita in 2015, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were less than 10 per Swede, the rest being foreigners, travelers.

A similar thing happened in The Netherlands, where the public transport system went to a fully automated and electronic system. In order for a foreigner to take the train from Schiphol to Amsterdam Central (return ticket about 10 euro), he had to first buy a chip card for 7.5 euro. Then he had to top it up with at least 20 euros in order to be able to board a train. 5 euro is written off the balance, and another 5 euro needs to be topped up in order to be able to take a train back (20 euro minimum balance). So, for being able to buy a 10 euro return ticket, people had to pay 7.5 + 20 + 5 = 32.5 euro, all non-refundable. How can that be justified? It took only a few years before a single ticket could be bought again (at a small premium of 1 euro or so...). The exact same kind of ticket that they wanted to get rid of with this system. This exact same thing will happen when you phase out all the cash and replace it with some local electronic systems. You'll annoy people and scare them away, in addition to forcing them into huge and unjustifiable costs. That will, in the end, harm your nation's economy more than by just issuing a few sheets of paper and some metal discs.

As stated before, I think cash will end up like the paperless office: 'cashless' is hyped as the future, but in the end you will still have cash around.