As Sweden was the first European country to use cash for payments back in 1661 it’s unsurprising that it’s the first European country that wants to be cashless. This is why, for several years, I’ve been watching the regular speeches by Lars Nyberg, Deputy Governor of the Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, talking about eradicating the use of cash in Sweden.

February 2003

Cash is still the king. Given the rapid increase in the use of cards in Sweden, particularly in the late 1990’s, cash should have been expected to fall in importance. This, however, does not seem to have happened. The use of cash, measured as the ratio of the value of currency in circulation (M0) and GDP, fell during the first half of the decade, but have been fairly constant since then, lately even increasing somewhat.

January 2005

Swedes, however, seem to be using more cash than other Nordic countries… Swedish banks do not implement any fees for cash withdrawals while such fees do occur, for example, in other Nordic countries. Thus, differences in pricing can be expected to be an important factor in explaining the differences we observe in the use of cash.

February 2008

Cash payments still account for a large proportion of the number of transactions in the Swedish economy. But it comes as no surprise to anyone if I say that they have declined in significance in recent decades. As a per cent of GDP, the share of Swedish banknotes and coins in circulation (M0) has more than halved since the 1950s, from around 10 per cent to just around 3.5 per cent. In the past fifteen years, however, the trend has leveled off.

January 2010

Despite the fact that card payments predominate in terms of both the number and value of payments, the Swedish public still prefers cash to cards for purchases of less than SEK 100. Our survey shows that as many as 22 per cent choose cash for purchases between SEK 100 and SEK 500. For amounts under SEK 100, cash is preferred by 63 per cent.