speaking from a Swedish perspective, I haven’t even seen Swedish currency in about eight years.

I’m not even joking.

There are lots of places where most customers still pay in cash. Mostly ethnic minorities in stores that cater for ethnic minorities. I find it interesting that ethnicity or religion would end up being a signal informing if one is using cash or digital money.

That's your personal choice. Doesn't mean stores don't accept cash.

No, its the nature of the country.

And, most companies don’t take cash, especially smaller ones.

Large companies (ICA the supermarket) takes cash but it’s like 1/200 who use cash and the cashier is often visibly flustered when cash is presented.

Please stop mansplaining (and wrongly so at that!).

I happen to be in sweden in this very moment. And no, cashiers are not flustered and alarmed when they see cash, old people pay with cash every day.

Yes there is some restaurants that will not take cash.

Last april I was in a place where they did not take cards :)

There's more to sweden than what you personally experience.

Curious where abouts you are in Sweden? (i.e. how far north/south).

I'm not Swedish but a lot of my family are, so I visit fairly often. In Gothenburg at least, it's pretty standard in my experience that small grocery stores won't accept cash. I won't pretend that generalises anywhere else.

What does gender have to do with this conversation?

Unfortunately there is no term for "stop explaining my own country to me", but there are similarities with that other situation so… a rhetorical figure? Heard of those?

There was a term: condescending, which is ironic because you were being quite condescending in your reply to me about my observed experience being somehow a personal choice.

I could write a huge diatribe of statistics and behaviours that back me up, it's quite public that even in 2022 across the entire country only 8% of transactions were made in cash- which is even lower in the cities. https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/rapporter/betalni...

And it's also quite well known that many independent businesses do not accept cash (my Coffee Shop, the restaurants I frequent (Quan in Malmo, Marvin in Malmo)).

And yes I've visibly seen cashiers recoil after putting a transaction through to the payment terminal; only to have the person tell them that they'd rather pay in cash (leading to the cashier becoming flustered).

Yes, it's more common that old people use cash (from my observed experience) but increasingly they're using debit cards (not mobile payment methods like younger folks), but no: the country is pretty much cashless; and coming from the UK (where not accepting cash is definitely a more controversial decision outside of London): here it's seen as pretty normal to say "no cash" or "cash free".

Speaking for: Stockholm, Malmo, Gothenburg, Lund, Sundsvall, Oskarshamn and Umeå, and after being in the country for 11 years. I'm not sure what other representation I should be seeing.

Talking about my personal observed experience doesn't invalidate yours, but it feels like I can speak for the overwhelming majority of the population here.

And incidentally I'm also in Sweden right now (https://mrkoll.se/person/Jan-Martin-Harris-Harasym-Kattsunds...); if you'd like me to document a day trying to use only cash I'll let you know how it goes. But I won't be able to get to work (Malmo Busses do not take cash) and I won't be able to eat at any of the restaurants in Malmo (Saluhallen and the others I mentioned above are entirely cashless) so I'll have to use COOP, Willis or ICA exclusively.

Well I've seen a lot of incompetent cashiers. Especially in summer when the real ones are on vacation. I'm not sure what that proves besides that being a cashier isn't as easy as you might think.

I assure you that pressbyrån accepts cash and you can buy tickets there to get to work. Also having a long subscription for public transport on the phone is a bad idea, because if you drop your phone you'll also lose your subscription. And depending on how many days you had left and what phone you had, it could cost you more than the phone.

And handpicking restaurants that don't accept cash is no more a proof than if I were to do the same but handpicking restaurants that don't accept cards.

Happy to hear of any restaurants that only take cash in Sweden tbh

Wasn't your claim that they won't take cash at all? Why the sudden shift?

Anyway it was a place i went in april, i'll have to look it up, i don't really remember.

patronizing

Many many restaurants and stores never accept cash here. This would be a huge problem if cash suddenly becomes the only way of paying for everyone at the same time.

Stores accept cash. Some restaurants don't, but restaurants aren't really something necessary for survival.

Yeah, I don't know if I even seen the new money.