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Comment by Mashimo | Hacker News Reader

> Definetly not in Europe.

Denmark and probably other Scandinavian countries almost never deal with cash any more. Everything is by card (Visa) or MobilePay (an app connected to your card)

If the card would stop working you would have a hard time.

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In Sweden we are super reliant on digital payments and a lot of stores don't even accept cash any more. Most people don't carry cash only digital payments. This simplifies for the stores/restaurants and maybe decreases the risk of handling larger amounts of cash. I love the simplicity of digital payments and not having to bother with change and such. We even have an app called Swish (set up by Swedish banks) that does free money transfer between people and can also do payments to stores.

Every once in a while some pensioner organisation or so starts a debate about them not understanding how to pay their bills via an app and that they can't shop at some stores/restaurants only taking payments via an app (Swish). Some seniors might not have a smartphone or are unable to use it.

But the real and much bigger issue is what happens in case of a crisis. Like a huge power outage or the rolling blackouts that might come this winter depending on how the power situation develops in Europe. Or in case of natural disaster or war. We have historically had a very stable power grid and society so most people don't even think about what they would do if their digital payment methods just stopped working. I don't think it benefits our society that we are unable to make payments without technology.

When you pay by card in a Norwegian store, you probably use a card that supports BankAxept (since 1991). In that case the payment will be made through the banks, instead of through Visa. 3 of 4 payments go through BankAxept.

Cards issued by banks will often combine BankAxept and Visa/MC on the same card, so that users don't need a separate Visa card. The terminal will switch to BankAxept if available automatically. This is done transparently, so there are no issues with using it as a Visa card outside Norway.

As a Swede, why don't we have this, it's a good solution for customers and merchants.

There are still some fees involved of course, but they are much lower and typically a fixed price. One article I read says that BankAxept is cheaper than Visa for transactions over 30 NOK (~3 USD), but the information may be out of date.

I realize that what we have in the EU is some regulation to put caps on the fees. It's better than it used to be.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...

Thankfully, there is initiative for digital euro: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...

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