Case Study: How Can Crypto Fit In With Sweden Becoming First Cashless Country?

[JollyGood]

Sweden is on course to become the first country that will become cashless as the use of bank cards is rising fast.

Between 2016 and 2018 card payments increased by 25 per cent while cash payments declined by 25% so currently around 80% of all the population of Sweden use a card to pay for transactions:
https://sweden.se/business/cashless-society/

Swish App was a result of 6 of the biggest Swedish banks getting together so 7 million use it to make/receive payments or plain old credit/debit cards: https://www.swish.nu/about-swish

In Sweden the gradual transition between using and not using cash has led to more people using debit/credit cards to make payments (and signing up to Swish) so has the window of opportunity been missed for crypto to have taken its place alongside the bank card and Swish payments in Sweden?

Without looking at crypto debit cards as an option because crypto such as BTC and ETH are converted to USD/GBP/EUR before being used for payments, what do you think could be done to help increase crypto usage in a near-cashless society such as Sweden using real-time P2P payments as envisioned by Satoshi? The most obvious option that comes to mind would be having a mass roll out of crypto payment devices such as the XPOS that Pundi X created.

What are your views?


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PLEASE NOTE: This thread will be self-moderated because those posting here with Yobit banners displayed will probably have their posts deleted as soon as I see them. Yobit has been outed by too many users as a scam and for that reason if gullible users or newbies see this thread full of posts showing a Yobit signature campaign they might end up falling victim to it. Those displaying Yobit signature campaigns have the rest of the whole of the forum to promote it. Furthermore, if I think posts might have some worthwhile content but were made just for the sake of promoting a banner or flooding the thread with a particular banner, I will probably delete them too.

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[JollyGood]

what do you think could be done to help increase crypto usage in a near-cashless society such as Sweden using real-time P2P payments as envisioned by Satoshi?

Probably not much--the way I see it, crypto adoption depends on people having trouble using fiat (or not trusting it or the banking system).  Thus far I don't think people are clamoring for an alternative to fiat except for hardcore bitcoiners, and that population doesn't represent the majority by any means.  As it stands, the average person would have to purchase bitcoin first, then find a merchant that takes it, and then proceed with the purchase.  It's completely unnecessary when everything is priced in terms of fiat and people receive their paychecks in fiat.  There's no need for the average person to introduce another step in what could be a simple financial transaction just to spend bitcoin instead of fiat.

I'm not even sure going cashless is a great idea anyway, because if all you use is a debit/credit card, you're giving up a lot of your privacy.  Most people don't even think about that, but I'd rather not have all my financial transactions known by banks and the government.  Not that I only use cash, because I don't.  I'm guilty of using plastic quite often.  Anyway, the most anonymous way to pay for anything is with physical cash, and I'd hate to see it eliminated entirely.

This thread will be self-moderated because those posting here with Yobit banners displayed will probably have their posts deleted as soon as I see them.

Good call on that one.

Well I understand what you means about going cashless on to bank cards as it means effectively not being able to keep any transactions private. Those wanting to pay using cash (for the sole purpose of anonymity for example) are being restricted. If bank cards are the only real alternative then the element of loss of privacy plays a massive part because whether design or by default it allows almost everything you did with your card to be traced whereas if some of those non-cash transactions were at least completed using crypto, one could expect some degree of anonymity.

Looking at it from another angle, going cashless would only be successful on the premise that all citizens had a bank account with a bank card they could use. It is reported that i-Zettle and card payment merchants are on the rise in Sweden so much so that even buskers and those classed as beggars all accept card payments.

After doing a little research it seems even very small businesses in medium to large cities across Sweden are accepting card only payments and actively refuse cash, even cases of tourists not being aware of the situation and struggling to find a place to eat or drink because they found their card blocked by the card issuer for whatever reason.

I think part of the problem for those wanting to find an alternative to cash is the creation of Swish by the 6 largest bank, they have a virtual monopoly between them so it suits them to do anything to lower their long-term costs. It seems they are for now happy with the status quo with no space for possible crypto payments made between them and it does not seem things will change any time soon.

(I forgot to self-moderate the thread so locked that one and opened this one)

[exstasie]

In Sweden the gradual transition between using and not using cash has led to more people using debit/credit cards to make payments (and signing up to Swish) so has the window of opportunity been missed for crypto to have taken its place alongside the bank card and Swish payments in Sweden?

Consumers just aren't demanding cryptocurrency payments (yet). They are demanding cashless and P2P payments. That's why Swish caught on Sweden and why Zelle/Venmo are catching on in the US.

Banks and merchants will react to demand for cryptocurrency services when it actually emerges in a big way.* We're going to see more partnerships like Flexa and Gemini, which allow instant payments via QR code at POS terminals, with instantaneous exchange conversion on the back end. This model allows consumer demand for cryptocurrency merchant acceptance to flourish without hindering merchants with unconfirmed transactions and expensive/complicated LN nodes.

Without looking at crypto debit cards as an option because crypto such as BTC and ETH are converted to USD/GBP/EUR before being used for payments, what do you think could be done to help increase crypto usage in a near-cashless society such as Sweden using real-time P2P payments as envisioned by Satoshi?

Pre-mass adoption, cashless fiat and cryptocurrency mediums need to exist side by side. Merchants pay their supply lines, payrolls, etc. in fiat. Once we see supply lines and payrolls being paid in Bitcoin (this could take decades), cryptocurrency acceptance without conversion becomes possible.

*And I do think we're seeing the beginnings of that. Not for nothing, Visa just acquired Plaid, a fintech company prominent in the crypto industry with clients such as Coinbase and Abra. The legacy dinosaurs are dipping their toes into the industry because they see the writing on the wall. Cryptocurrency adoption just hasn't hit critical mass yet.

[stompix]

In Sweden the gradual transition between using and not using cash has led to more people using debit/credit cards to make payments (and signing up to Swish) so has the window of opportunity been missed for crypto to have taken its place alongside the bank card and Swish payments in Sweden?

There was no window of opportunity, and if it was it would have been almost a decade ago, Swish was launched in 2012, by that time the number of people using bitcoin was in the thousands at best, i-zettle The Pharmacist mentioned in 2011...
No, bitcoin and other cryptos never had the opportunity to grab a piece of the pie, mobile app payments took the bulk of payments in Sweden well before people become aware of what cryptos are.

Without looking at crypto debit cards as an option because crypto such as BTC and ETH are converted to USD/GBP/EUR before being used for payments, what do you think could be done to help increase crypto usage in a near-cashless society such as Sweden using real-time P2P payments as envisioned by Satoshi? The most obvious option that comes to mind would be having a mass roll out of crypto payment devices such as the XPOS that Pundi X created.

You have to understand one thing, people care about their time a lot and they hate trying things that can't be done with 2 taps.
At the same time, they hate when dealing with money not to have someone to complain about, not to be able to blame mistakes on somebody, not to be able to issue chargebacks and a lot of other things.
That's why payments with cryptos are still stagnating and more and more embrace the safekeeping side of them.

To be able to compete with the new systems and even with cc, crypto payments need to be fast, easy and cheap.
And unfortunately, unless you go through a 3rd party they are not, and once you go through a 3rd party the costs of that operation come into the story and ... we're back to where we left with the only change that we're not calling them banks but crypto something...

As much as I would love to see usage growing I'm pretty pessimistic about it for the next couple of years at least.

PLEASE NOTE: This thread will be self-moderated ~

Best way to keep a thread under 2 pages 

[hatshepsut93]

You have to understand one thing, people care about their time a lot and they hate trying things that can't be done with 2 taps.
At the same time, they hate when dealing with money not to have someone to complain about, not to be able to blame mistakes on somebody, not to be able to issue chargebacks and a lot of other things.
That's why payments with cryptos are still stagnating and more and more embrace the safekeeping side of them.

To be able to compete with the new systems and even with cc, crypto payments need to be fast, easy and cheap.
And unfortunately, unless you go through a 3rd party they are not, and once you go through a 3rd party the costs of that operation come into the story and ... we're back to where we left with the only change that we're not calling them banks but crypto something...

If there was some good incentive to use crypto, a lot of people would learn to use it and wouldn't view it as a chore, but there's a huge disconnection between Bitcoin's values and regular people - no one cares about inflation unless they live in a country that experiences a hyperinflation, no one cares about privacy, and no one is paranoid about banks and other middlemen. People simply don't see any benefits in using Bitcoin for payments, so it remains a niche option for those who care.

[webtricks]

There are hundreds of threads on forum discussing the fundamental: Whether cryptocurrencies could be use as currency to pay for utilities? The underlying idea of this thread is also the same. But whenever we discuss the concept of 'crypto as currency', the basic problem always hinder the discussion and that is 'volatility'.

You gave the example of XPOS. Pundi X have done commendable job to make crypto as accessible and scalable as regular cash. But again the problem is volatility. It can be both-ways: for customers and for merchants. XPOS solves the merchant side problem by promising merchants reimbursement in Fiat. But customer side problem will always remain unsolved. I may deposit $10 on my app to pay for my bus ticket for next 5 days which is $2/day. But what if price of coin falls very next day? My budget will get disturbed.

So before we can bring 'crypto as currency' into mainstream, we have to concentrate on the basic idea of increasing the acceptance of crypto among public. The whole bus ticket problem as mentioned above will be solved if bus service starts selling ticket for 0.0003 BTC rather than $2. Then I no longer have to worry about price volatility. But until & unless people accept the idea of crypto as currency, there is no fun in spending crypto as currency, as simple as that.

[mu_enrico]

I have the feeling that cryptocurrencies already fell behind those payment fintech companies. For example, in Indonesia, we have OVO (https://www.ovo.id/) that acquired significant support from retail e-commerce and other day-to-day services. I assume that the Swish App is similar.

There at least three major problems for cryptocurrency to be used for commerce:
- slow
- expensive
- volatile

Hence, it is not our strength (yet?) to compete with fintech for payments. At the moment, cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, attract people because of jargon like trustless, decentralized, and deflation-based currency (which actually should be term non-debased).

Bitcoin is "good money", and if we could solve the problems mentioned above, we should be able to beat those fintech companies.

[JollyGood]

In Sweden the gradual transition between using and not using cash has led to more people using debit/credit cards to make payments (and signing up to Swish) so has the window of opportunity been missed for crypto to have taken its place alongside the bank card and Swish payments in Sweden?

There was no window of opportunity, and if it was it would have been almost a decade ago, Swish was launched in 2012, by that time the number of people using bitcoin was in the thousands at best, i-zettle The Pharmacist mentioned in 2011...
No, bitcoin and other cryptos never had the opportunity to grab a piece of the pie, mobile app payments took the bulk of payments in Sweden well before people become aware of what cryptos are.

Without looking at crypto debit cards as an option because crypto such as BTC and ETH are converted to USD/GBP/EUR before being used for payments, what do you think could be done to help increase crypto usage in a near-cashless society such as Sweden using real-time P2P payments as envisioned by Satoshi? The most obvious option that comes to mind would be having a mass roll out of crypto payment devices such as the XPOS that Pundi X created.

You have to understand one thing, people care about their time a lot and they hate trying things that can't be done with 2 taps.
At the same time, they hate when dealing with money not to have someone to complain about, not to be able to blame mistakes on somebody, not to be able to issue chargebacks and a lot of other things.
That's why payments with cryptos are still stagnating and more and more embrace the safekeeping side of them.

To be able to compete with the new systems and even with cc, crypto payments need to be fast, easy and cheap.
And unfortunately, unless you go through a 3rd party they are not, and once you go through a 3rd party the costs of that operation come into the story and ... we're back to where we left with the only change that we're not calling them banks but crypto something...

As much as I would love to see usage growing I'm pretty pessimistic about it for the next couple of years at least.

PLEASE NOTE: This thread will be self-moderated ~

Best way to keep a thread under 2 pages 

Two pages will do me fine as long as a decent conversation emerges 

For those that are driving forces behind pushing their crypto to the front line they should keep the Sweden scenario in mind so when it seems another country might go to those lengths trying to become a chasless society - maybe they will be able to make early in-roads with a view to expanding crypto usage in the process.