The article makes Sweden into something it is not. First, Swedes are not as eager to adapt new technologies as it may seem from the text. Case in point, NFC is just arriving in the country and in one of the main grocery shops, that has its own bank as well, you can only use store cards this way. A small subset of cards are also still swipe-only. In all honesty, Poland seems like a better example of this as it is effectively the sandbox of Europe for consumer finance.

Second, this trend is visible in many countries in Europe. In my 7 years in the Netherlands before I moved to Sweden, it would be unusual for me to have any cash on me and in recent years the number of 'pin' (card) only points of sale there has been growing tremendously.