Cashless society in Switzerland? People to vote on keeping cash forever

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/02/06/cashless-society-not-in-switzerland-where-people-will-vote-to-keeping-banknotes-and-coins-

by starkd • 3 years ago

205 200 3 years ago

euronews.com

pacifika• 3 years ago

How does the voting work? Is it a good reference for other nations?

wereHamster• 3 years ago

Some info here: https://www.ch.ch/en/votes-and-elections

foruhar• 3 years ago

I'm not sure exactly what you are asking but it may be helpful to know that Switzerland is a direct democracy.

https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-ge....

jerojero2• 3 years ago

It would require some modifications I guess. Switzerland has a relatively long history of direct democracy and citizen participation in politics, and for this reason people do not fall prey so easily to misinformation like they would in other countries where referendums are held that do not have people prepared for it (see Colombia, the UK, Chile, or even California).

The key to direct democracy is citizen engagement and in Switzerland the government actually does a lot to support informing citizens about what they're about to vote.

I think for other nations it might be better to look into citizens assemblies as a next step in empowering democracies because citizens assemblies are very good at achieving public policy that aligns with the general population but in an environment where it's much easier to control for misinformation. In Ireland these were used in conjunction with direct democracy (referendums) as part of the process, in that, the assembly explored the question that would be asked in the referendum and gave a sort of "official opinion" on it. This was then widely distributed as part of the information campaign that the government did for the referendum. Polling suggests that a large part of the population that voted on the referendum was aware of the resolution made by the assembly, which is a good sign. And yeah, ultimately, the results of the referendum aligned with the assembly. The issue was abortion and it was voted in favor, consider that Ireland is a very religious country so it was quite a contentious issue.

lasftew3• 3 years ago

The Swiss are not smarter than others. We just have a system that keeps the misinformation by all parties in a relative equilibrium.

s1artibartfast2• 3 years ago

I think Switzerland has one of the best governments in the world. His model basically after the United States but implemented on a smaller scale where it works even better. It has a weaker federal system and most of the funding is concentrated in the states/cantons. There's also a long tradition of putting questions to the people in terms of a general vote. I think they voted on whether cow herders could remove the horns or not.

zhdc1• 3 years ago

It's really not all that similar. The emphasis is very much on the local government, more so than really anywhere else in the world (that I know of). There are some states where local governments matter. There are more where power is concentrated at the level of the county or state government.

A (bad) way to think of it would be something along the lines of a New England townhall system on steroids, with several layers of federal/confederated associations above the local township (geminde).

Again, not a great comparison, but it's something that at least a portion of the US-centric users on here would know a little about.

seydor2• 3 years ago

Does this mean that the digital equivalent of cash in the form of an appropriate cryptocurrency is officially also mandated by law?

bluepoint• 3 years ago

I don’t think so, unless it is the only official currency.

rom-antics3• 3 years ago

No, the vote is about banknotes and coins (as the headline states)

seydor2• 3 years ago

What if i print private keys in qr codes and call them banknotes

WhatsName• 3 years ago

Properies of hard cash: - almost untraceable - works offline - easy to understand

Doesn't matter how you turn it, cryptocurrency is never replacing cash. Digital currency, maybe, but I would always take cash for any inperson transaction.

jrm4• 3 years ago

I think few people are seriously suggesting replacement.

The better way to consider: There are arguably favorable properties that ARE in cash, that are NOT in mainstream bank-led digital payments, and that ARE in cryptocurrency. Some people have already discovered this and use it for these purposes. Now, it is also true that the cryptocurrency space is a breeding ground for scammy behavior.

The only question is -- to what extent might cryptocurrency get more popular for "legit" purposes.

silvestrov• 3 years ago

Forever is a short time in politics.

Nothing stops another voting in 10 years time to swing the other way.

inductive_magic2• 3 years ago

Constitutions have a tendency to be sticky though.

_0ffh• 3 years ago

Constitutions are factually much less sticky than formally, as ultimately words require interpretation. When the law can't be rewritten, it will just be reinterpreted.

Here's a reasonably well known monograph about the topic:

John Hasnas, "The Myth of the Rule of Law", Wisconsin Law Review 199 (1995)

https://medusa.teodesian.net/docs/liberty/MythFinalDraft.pdf

arlort• 3 years ago

That's only true when they are significantly more difficult to amend than the ordinary legislative procedure

sofixa6• 3 years ago

That's not necessarily a good thing. Constitutions need to be able to evolve with the times - otherwise many countries would still be disenfranchising vast swathes of their population (women - and funnily, in some Swiss cantons, women couldn't vote until the 1990s!), or a bunch of other problems. It's absolutely a problem when they become synonymous with a deity's work and thus untouchable. One of the worse examples of this is the US, where with the added benefit of the mess that is common law (precedents and reinterpretations being a thing) it's just a messy vague situation. France was able to add abortion protections to their constitution, meanwhile the US relied on an interpretation of a vague statute to constitutionally protect them, and then a change of opinion in the courts changed that.

AdrianB12• 3 years ago

As someone else already wrote, Constitutions tend to be reinterpreted - see all the controversies in US on several Amendments and the lack of meaning of "not infringe" these days.

ricardobayes• 3 years ago

Hungary, which used to be a pretty stable and all around OK country showed it takes one single political misstep to cause a landslide victory in the next election cycle - meaning supermajority. Then that party took the advantage to re-write the consitution to gerrymander and keep the power for many years a-coming. I think most political parties would do the same, regardless of country. So next time you curse a politician out at the other end of the political spectrum, also thank them, for actually existing. Nothing destroys a country faster than a (quasi) single-party system.

rom-antics3• 3 years ago

How much lifting is the word "forever" doing in that headline? I thought all laws are forever, until they're changed or repealed, yet reporting doesn't usually include that word. In the future if someone wanted to try to change this, they could just hold another vote, no? How is this different?

bigyikes• 3 years ago

If they omitted the word “forever”, it might seem like they are overturning an existing law or voting against an imminent threat to remove cash.

phreeza• 3 years ago

This website seems like really low quality blogspam. Higher quality source: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-may-face-a-future-referen...

Laaas3• 3 years ago

Euronews was recently bought apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronews#Alpac_Capital

beebeepka2• 3 years ago

They've been thrash for as long as I can remember. I visit their site every couple of years and content doesn't match their name at all. "Euro" "news"

matsemann2• 3 years ago

While I like several aspects of cash, like little tracking/privacy violations, hard for someone to just cut you off from your money etc., I don't think I've used cash in 5+ years (except vacations). Absolutely every vendor in my country accepts cards or some kind of app payment and have for years, even girl scouts selling cookies.

And cash is expensive. It's easy to scoff about the 1-2 % fees on cards (but in my country "BankAxept" has a flat fee of ~0.024 USD per transaction, so even cheaper). But having a business dealing with a lot of cash is also crazy expensive. You have to have extra security, pay someone to come and get it or yourself go to the bank and deposit. Then also buy rolls of change. I remember my dad spending a lot of hours a week dealing with this. So yeah, I'm all for keeping it, but I also kinda want to be able to not subside other's use of it. So a fee for using cash or something perhaps.

Laaas3• 3 years ago

I imagine we'll have digital cash eventually, but the only sound non-blockchain solution I know of requires local quantum computation: https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/107

tzs• 3 years ago

What do you mean by “sound”? Why doesn’t David Chaum’s eCash from 1982 [1] qualify? That’s an on-line system. In 1990 he, Fiat, and Nairobi proposed an off-line system [2].

[1] http://www.hit.bme.hu/~buttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/Chau...

[2] http://blog.koehntopp.de/uploads/chaum_fiat_naor_ecash.pdf

nic547• 3 years ago

This popular imitative doesn't mandate the acceptance of cash. It mandates that the federal government must ensure that there are enough banknotes and coins and that replacing the swiss franc with another currency must be done via popular vote. So it's not really that radical.

The same organisation is already planning on another popular initiative that seems to go in the direction of mandating the acceptance of cash, but other than the title "Wer mit Bargeld bezahlen will, muss mit Bargeld bezahlen können" (roughly: if you want to pay with cash must be able to pay with cash) I can't find any details about it.

JumpinJack_Cash4• 3 years ago

> And cash is expensive. It's easy to scoff about the 1-2 % fees on cards

The fee could be 100% for the vendor if the card holders uses chargeback. People forget that chargeback exists because they almost never use it but it's a real possibility.

The recent OnlyFans scandal was in fact not an OnlyFans scandal but people charging back their credit card after the acquire the content provided by the creator.

If something has a shot at ever replacing cash won't be cards but instant wire transfers between banks so that payments mde by citizens are both real time and impossible to chargeback. SEPA Instant is the closest effort but even in leader countries there are 40%+ banks which still don't have it.

In the US it will be called FedNow but it's in its infancy

Gare• 3 years ago

You mean something like Digital Euro? https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...

thatguy0900• 3 years ago

For shopping online, I honestly wouldn't use a service where charging back wasn't an ultimate option. Far too many scams, everywhere, and inconsistent support. Something like Amazon, sure, but random niche shopping websites? No way am I wiring money with no way out if it's a scam

acdha• 3 years ago

If something has a shot at ever replacing cash won't be cards but instant wire transfers between banks so that payments mde by citizens are both real time and impossible to chargeback.

Chargebacks are enormously popular with the public, however, because they provide a remedy for various scams and avenues for abuse by businesses, which is extremely common. I think it would be more likely that a successful replacement would refine that process rather than remove it.

sofixa6• 3 years ago

Are you talking about SEPA Instant? It's already here, across the whole eurozone, and usually free (some legacy banks charge a small fee).

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK• 3 years ago

I keep reading about charge back, but in only two cases I tried to do that, because I didn't receive the stuff I paid for, I haven't succeeded. Banks seem to side with the merchants, because merchants pay them, not us.

slillibri• 3 years ago

A fee for using cash would be incredibly regressive because poor people use cash the most.

scarface743• 3 years ago

The poor already pay more for using cash. They pay the same amount as people using credit cards and don’t get any of the rewards/cash back that the more affluent do

dataflow3• 3 years ago

I also kinda want to be able to not subside other's use of it. So a fee for using cash or something perhaps.

This sounds like... a poor choice of a hill to die on? The people who need cash the most tend to be poorer; asking them to pay more would be just cruel to many of them. There are lots of things (like taxes in general....) where some people benefit more than others from them, but we ignore that and just distribute the burden equally as a matter of principle instead of asking everyone to pay proportionally to what they use.

matsemann2• 3 years ago

Good point, I haven't thought of that angle.

Edit: But the homeless on the streets where I live that sell magazines etc accept mobile payment. And I've worked for the main government welfare agency a few years providing help to these people, and an assumption / basis was that they had a phone to be contacted on, which proved to work fine for most of them.

rmbyrro• 3 years ago

In places where you can get life by with just a phone and a card, even poor people have phones. So perhaps this reality is already changing in favor of the poorer?

bagels• 3 years ago

Card fees are often 3% and vendors have to increase prices to cover this. People paying cash are already paying these same inflated prices to cover credit card fees.

toastal• 3 years ago

Luckily not everywhere. In Thailand cash (and bank transfers) are king. Most places do not accept credit, and the place that do usually require a $15 or $30 minimum and/or you're going to pay that extra overhead yourself. Alternatively, like when I bought my monitor recently, folks will just give you a discount for paying via cash/transfer (high value items like that often end up as credit charges or interest loans through the bankers).

wkat4242• 3 years ago

I still use cash a lot. Many places I go to only accept cash.

These places are not fully licensed which is probably why they don't want to accept digital but there's definitely still a case for it IMO.

tsol• 3 years ago

What about the people that do use cash regularly?

And cash is expensive.

Cards are expensive, the price is just currently being subsidized by the industry. Do we as a society really want to have to rely on that? There's no guarantee credit card fees will not increase in the future

morelisp• 3 years ago

There's no guarantee credit card fees will not increase in the future

What kind of guarantee can be made except strong limits enshrined in law, which there already are? (If you don't trust the laws, you can't trust cash either.)

photonbucket• 3 years ago

Credit card fees should go down if they remove the overhead of 'rewards'

starkd5• 3 years ago

There are a lot of people who deal only in cash. I knew someone who was a shop mechanic. Completely self-employed and only took cash. When he died, he had stored savings in random places all over his house. He had thousands squirreled away. I can't imagine how much he lost due to inflation over the years, but he had plenty of money to live on.

languagehacker• 3 years ago

Switzerland has a very specific reason for preserving cash, and it's called money laundering

FpUser• 3 years ago

Alternatively the specific reason is to protect people from ever more hairy government paws crawling all over and inside their lives.

lasftew3• 3 years ago

Swiss here. This is true. Buy an expensive watch and want to pay with credit card? We'll need to verify name and address, apologies Sir! Have a bag of cash? No questions asked, have a nice day!

anonym29• 3 years ago

I don't see this as a valorization of physical currency so much as a hedge against the threat of complete loss of financial privacy & autonomy that comes built-in with state-mandated CBDC's.

Kukumber5• 3 years ago

cashless society is a requirement to ascend to the next civilization

Karsteski2• 3 years ago

If the next civilization is my government having the ability to take my money away from me, I want to part of it

Kukumber5• 3 years ago

you'll be busy counting your cash on this burning planet while china will be a multiplanetary society

abc20230215• 3 years ago

I am guessing it will be a two-class society: one being able to cut off other's access to money when needed.

Kukumber5• 3 years ago

That's a risk indeed, but that shouldn't prevent us from doing the work in order to ascend, so we must debate and plan today, Switzerland's political system is unique with their direct democracy, so they are better prepared than the rest of the western world

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS3• 3 years ago

If that's the future, I'm glad I'm history.

wonderwonder3• 3 years ago

Even Star Trek had gold pressed latinum

Yiin• 3 years ago

not necessarily the better one though

mrshadowgoose• 3 years ago

This can only be realized in a post-scarcity society, and even in a post-scarcity cashless scenario, energy and matter are fundamentally limiting, so people will have allocations of those units.

dukeofdoom2• 3 years ago

Government debanked the lockdown protestors in Canada. Freezing their bank accounts. So people started giving them cash so they have something for food. But imagine if you couldn't buy bread because government decided you shouldn't oppose their lockdown policy. Without cash, you are a slave to the state, and can't have food unless they say you can.

mistrial9• 3 years ago

most people who have never experienced real hunger do not understand this

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS3• 3 years ago

This, and I cannot agree enough. Generally speaking, governments don't always have your best interests in mind.

sofixa6• 3 years ago

Generally speaking, governments don't always have your best interests in mind

Generally speaking, this a massive stretch for a democratic country such as Switzerland. What is the government there but a representation of it's citizens?

nubinetwork4• 3 years ago

Don't get me wrong, but the government asked the fringers to leave nicely, then demanded they leave... other than amassing an army and arresting them all, I don't see what else they could have done to make them listen.

lotsofpulp3• 3 years ago

amassing an army and arresting them all

This is acceptable. Everyone should have an inalienable right to proof of identity and access to an electronic funds account, regardless of their crimes. If the government wants to seize funds, they can go to court and prove the crime.

AstixAndBelix• 3 years ago

At least if you capture someone you have to feed them. But if you freeze their money? That's hell

ecshafer• 3 years ago

Right to assembly and protest are inalienable rights. Do you feel the same way towards the chinese being harsh with hong kong protestors? or should they simply go home when asked?

throwaway98702• 3 years ago

Doesn't really seem like due process.

throwaway98702• 3 years ago

Not only a slave to the state, but a slave to private companies. Most electronic payments, including cards and apps are via companies (as opposed to govt). Who wants companies to have more control over their life?

egberts12• 3 years ago

Folks in Mountainous, rugged environment knows the value of physical fiat and its essential exchange mechanism.

refuse• 3 years ago

Yep. Power or internet goes out where I live fairly often and you'd have to drive at least an hour to use anything but cash.

Another commenter already mentioned natural disasters, which happen with surprising frequency (I've been through quite a few myself).

Cash fills in society's all-too-common edge cases.

Scoundreller2• 3 years ago

I kinda thought those environments would be less dependent on emergency cash, because they'll have a week's worth of food, backup energy/power sources (BBQs, propane tanks, jerry cans of gas, woodstoves, etc.).

It's people in the cities that get boned when the grid crashes.

grahar64• 3 years ago

Having just come from the cyclone ravaged Gisborne region in New Zealand, where internet and communications have been down now for 5 days. The first thing we did was count all the cash we had, because it is the only way we could buy food and fuel.

Cash works when there is no power or communication.

Clubber3• 3 years ago

Also cash isn't easily trackable. This is nice if you are uneasy with all the tracking and surveillance going on today.

wongarsu• 3 years ago

It's also really hard to stop people from using their cash. Of course governments see this as a weakness, but everyone concerned about government overreach should appreciate how your cards and bank accounts can be frozen, but your cash is yours (as long as you have physical control over it).

shortcake272• 3 years ago

This is always brought up as an argument against cashless. I don’t get it. I’m quite passionate about tracking, collection, and use of personal data. But I really couldn’t care less about my day to day purchases. My bank knows that I buy a coffee every morning and lunch from a local vendor, and some groceries or dinner in the evening. My bank won’t use this for any kind of targeted advertising and I trust them to keep it secure. This data seems so unimportant compared to the frustration of cash. The second I step foot in a cash economy I start having issues with large bills (do you have a smaller note etc), losing change, having to keep on visiting ATMs. It’s extremely irritating once you’ve gotten used to cashless. What is everyone buying on a daily basis with cash that is so secret the banks and governments must not know?

iforgotpassword4• 3 years ago

This is my core concern really. So far, most outages I experienced here in Germany were mildly annoying, mostly due to the fact that cash is still King here and I had enough around the house to cover a couple days, but everytime it happens I think of what it would be like if we were as cashless as for example China. I'm not against all those modern payment methods, but I seriously think it should be mandatory for stores offering the basic necessities to accept cash.

kqr• 3 years ago

Yup, this is my stance as well. I switched to a cash-friendly bank, I always carry a few bills on me, and I prefer to shop at stores that do take cash. (This is in a region of the world that's virtually cashless in everyday business.)

When people hear this they assume I must be anti-electronic payment but that's far from true. I love the convenience.

I just think it's really, really important we retain the option of physical cash, and hope that we rarely have to exercise it. It's worth the additional investment to achieve resilience.

krzyk2• 3 years ago

You had a power outage that lasted few days?

BTW. For short outage batteries in terminal is enough, and BTSes have UPS that last quite long. Basically when my neighborhood has power outage (once a year maybe) for max 2-4 hours, cell service still works (a bit slower because everyone switched to it).

efitz• 3 years ago

My major concerns are about surveillance and control.

The USA is mow requiring banks to report all transactions over $600 to the federal government; the credit card companies are adding category based tracking to transactions at businesses in unfavored industries like gun stores, and banks and credit card companies are denying service to specific individuals due to online speech that had nothing to do with the financial institutions themselves. Canada is “de-banking” protesters. At a macro scale the US government and others are using the SWIFT system to interdict transactions by unfavored individuals, and are electronically “seizing” accounts of such people, usually without a warrant.

We need cash to prevent totalitarianism.

robocat• 3 years ago

Here is a news video partly about a queue at a cash machine: https://youtube.com/watch?v=I6gVliTmPGA

NZ translations: Spark == ATT, kai == food, munted == fucked, Gisbourne == town of 40000 in the wop-wops (I loved the place when I last visited there!)

Off topic, but I would be interested to know what people from the US think of NZ reporting compared to US reporting.

dzhiurgis2• 3 years ago

FWIW one of the bottle shop reopened while storm was ongoing using a generator and was taking payments for some cards offline, tho my card wasn’t enabled for that. I had cash, but that’s NZ for you - first to implement paywave but now there’s surcharge’s everywhere. I was completely cashless/wallet-less in europe.

pyuser583• 3 years ago

When I moved to San Francisco, I was told to always keep two weeks cash on hand. If there is an earth quake, the bridges can be down for a while, and cash will become very important.

auxbuss• 3 years ago

There's a real world example of this situation from the six-month Irish bank strike of 1970. Cheques, pubs, and trust ultimately replaced the banking system; and everything kept moving; not perfectly, of course, but neither are our current systems.

A couple of links to get you going, but there's a lot of data out there on this:

https://archive.is/20180106184835/https://www.ft.com/content...

https://archive.ph/20120802230107/http://www.independent.ie/...

It's also an object lesson on how money is created out of thin air.

wonderwonder3• 3 years ago

In certain cases Cash takes on almost a freedom of speech importance. Government can just switch off the digital finances of any movement they don't like. Cash makes that harder.

bogomipz2• 3 years ago

As a topical counterpoint, governments can also just switch off the existing currency in favor of a new currency and create a cash scarcity crisis when theres not enough of the new currency in circulation. This is exactly the situation in Nigeria right now. See:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/angry-protests...

Another recent example of a hard currency crisis is what's been happening in Lebanon, where the government simply switched off full access:

https://www.ft.com/content/a710fa12-e7fe-4aab-8e4f-962f01add...

galleywest200• 3 years ago

I mean they could, but would a country as wealthy as Switzerland just break all business relations like that?

m00dy• 3 years ago

except bitcoin.

wonderwonder3• 3 years ago

Even if I accept BTC, its pretty hard for me to buy food or gasoline with it.

coldtea• 3 years ago

You can't eat bitcoin. So you have to exchange it for food. But unlike cash they don't accept it anywhere (and accepting cash everywhere is what this voting tries to keep a reality).

Also you can't access it in places without internet access or electricity (e.g. during wartime or as a refugee on the go).

alwayslikethis• 3 years ago

Cash represents a fundamental freedom to trade autonomously, without having it be approved by any third party. We've seen various attempts on the part of government and private payment processors to stop certain kinds of trade they don't like from happening. If you don't think they should be able to do this, you should support keeping cash, while developing freedom-respecting alternatives such as Monero to give future generations the right to do the same.

erehweb• 3 years ago

Per https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-may-face-a-future-referen... Swiss people have $11.8K in cash on average - an extraordinarily high amount. [edited to insert "Swiss"]

inductive_magic2• 3 years ago

Fwiw, consumer prices in Switzerland don’t really compare to those in the rest of Europe or the US. Would be interesting to see a normalized bar chart.

raverbashing• 3 years ago

Swiss people are also good at saving money, regardless if it's cash or investments

sschueller2• 3 years ago

Gets difficult when you are paying negative interest rates but at least that is over now. [1]

[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/switzerland-exits-nega...

542458• 3 years ago

I’m very very skeptical of that number… If all the US currency was evenly divided amongst the US’s population, each person would hold about $6600. But almost nobody actually holds that much cash in the US - that cash is mostly held by criminal organizations, individuals that can’t engage with the traditional banking system, and foreign governments. The Swiss Franc has similar utility to the USD in that regard, so I suspect that number is not representative of nearly all households.

Scoundreller2• 3 years ago

Yeah, there's a ton of US$ cash outside of USA. Estimates have been between 40 and 72%

https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/jp-koning/how-much-u-s-cur...

Swiss Francs are far from a reserve currency, beyond the poor recognition of the notes outside of Switzerland and nearby countries, so I'm doubting too many are held outside of Switzerland. Euros or Dollars would be far better.

dzhiurgis2• 3 years ago

Whats the median, because average says nothing.

IYasha2• 3 years ago

Cash you can save, cash you can protect, cash you can move, cash you can share.

Digital goolag-coins you can not.

Save in gold.

Some mafia-related millionaire. :)

mring33621• 3 years ago

Who could have predicted, Switzerland, a bastion of financial privacy has voted to keep cash as legal tender?

nicolinox• 3 years ago

Revolut has already of few million users in Switzerland. It looks like swiss citizens and foreign immigrants being taken for a ride in fees by the swiss banks are now fed up and have alternatives...

sschueller2• 3 years ago

No, Revolut has ~250,000 customers in Switzerland.

Additionally people have had some serious issues with how Revolut operates including their complete lack of support system. There are several stories of people loosing large sums.

People used Revolut because it made thing easy and quick but now there are Swiss alternatives available like Neon[1] or Zak[2] with the backing of a Swiss bank license providing deposit guarantees.

[1] https://www.neon-free.ch/en/

[2] https://www.cler.ch/de/info/zak

g0xA52A2A• 3 years ago

I'll offer a random anecdote. I lived in Switzerland for a couple of years in the early 2010's, so before contactless payment had become so prevalent as it is now. Most of the transactions I made and saw others made was via cash rather than chip and PIN (the norm in most Europe at the time). One of the memories that stands out from my time there is whilst in the queue getting some groceries in Denner (a lower end supermarket), the person in front of me paid with a 1,000 CHF note and no-one batted an eye! I didn't even know the denominations went that high, which is more a reflection of my ignorance of the place I was living really. I mentioned this to my work colleges the next day and was told it wasn't that unusual, especially with older generations.

To be clear chip and PIN was widely available at this time but most people used cash. Even with a decade gone and a pandemic I still wouldn't be surprised if I were to go back to Switzerland tomorrow and see people paying for groceries with huge documentations

TLDR: The Swiss like cash.

xiphias22• 3 years ago

As a person helping my mother from far ahead I understand why.

The hard part is not using the card. It's setting it up: set up the bank application on mobile phone, setting up second factor, looking at notifications when they disappear after a few seconds (older people have slower reflexes).

All the flat UI means that my mother can't tell me the difference between a button and a text.

There's no button to see notifications, she has to use swiping, which is again much harder for older people, as all the timings were optimized for young people with young people reflexes.

Without all this how does she know how much money she has? (with cash she can just count it).

sportslife• 3 years ago

Notifications that disappear after a few seconds are a scourge that I've seen my surprisingly tech-literate mother struggle with too. I wonder if there is any work around accessibility and ui-notification duration or history.

linksnapzz• 3 years ago

Had the same experience getting groceries at Migros. I was about to pay with a credit card, and my friend elbowed me; said that I should just pay cash like everyone else.

mr90210• 3 years ago

I sometimes think that something similar might happen with ICE vehicles in the EU.

t0bia_s2• 3 years ago

Cashless society is utopia, not practical actualy. Imagine homeless people. You wouldn't be able to give them money. Imagine trade in place without data connection. Imagine misery in case of battery failure. Imagine chaos in case of bank system failure.

Of course total surveillance of state is main concern. Unfortunately WEF propose and EU make slow steps to limit cash as possible. Ie by advantages and bonuses in case of paying by card. Banks limiting cash withdraw amount...

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022...

Interesting documentary about one digital currency and digital ID, State of control (2022): https://player.vimeo.com/video/769876604

Czech senate recently refused to make cash as constitutional righ.

https://www.epochtimes.cz/2023/02/15/navrh-zahrnout-do-ustav...

jdhn• 3 years ago

Imagine homeless people. You wouldn't be able to give them money.

I've seen homeless people with QR codes and chip readers.

kevviiinn• 3 years ago

What a beautiful dystopia we live in

CatWChainsaw2• 3 years ago

In the modern day, digital continuity of identity is -almost- more important than physical, and being a "cyborg" (constantly in contact with your phone/portal to Internet) is increasingly critical. And we live in an increasingly climate-hostile world. Low tech is underappreciated by many, not just the usual crowd here.

t0bia_s2• 3 years ago

Sure, cash is eco friendly!

shortcake272• 3 years ago

Imagine homeless people. You wouldn't be able to give them money.

This is incorrect on all levels. Electronic payments between bank accounts have existed for decades. Banks in many countries now support instant payments using email/phone numbers. There are QR based payment methods which do the same thing. There has even been a special jacket invented to accept contactless:

https://www.tsip.co.uk/blog/2019/2/19/introducing-helping-he...

Imagine trade in place without data connection.

What, like an airplane? Where many airlines no longer even accept cash on the plane?

replicanteven• 3 years ago

Homeless people are often unbanked, and it's very difficult to open a new account without a credit score and permanent address.

Recent immigrants have difficulty opening accounts for a similar reason - only US credit counts. Political activists are also often denied accounts out of an abundance of caution on the bank's part, e.g. with the Occupy Wall St protests.

l0b0• 3 years ago

This is incorrect on all levels. Electronic payments between bank accounts have existed for decades. Banks in many countries now support instant payments using email/phone numbers. There are QR based payment methods which do the same thing. There has even been a special jacket invented to accept contactless:

Is this in Silicon Valley or something? That's the most tech utopian statement I've seen on HN for a while, where even homeless people obviously have access to electronic banking.

rtkwe• 3 years ago

Currently those require a bank, a (smart) phone, and a data service. All of which aren't impossible but they're also not exactly universal. There's still about 5% of the US that doesn't even have a bank account in their household, a number highly correlated with income.

occamrazor2• 3 years ago

To add some context: the group that promoted this initiative is a fringe ultraconservative one. Among other things, in 2020 they were denying the existence of Covid and in 2021 they did an anti 5G campaign.

0xDEF• 3 years ago

Far-right extremism is surprisingly common in the German-speaking world if you look beyond Western Germany and Berlin.

Eastern Germany (excluding Berlin) is one big racist hellscape where refugee homes get firebombed and Putin is worshipped as the second coming of Jesus.

Switzerland and Austria are not that bad yet but judging by social media trends they both have a significant far-right problem.

unconed2• 3 years ago

Hmm, this is a fun game.

"To add some context, the group that promoted this initiative is a fringe ultraprogressive one. Among other things, in 2020 they were first calling border closures racist, then denying the harmful effects of lockdown, then promoting riots and arson in the streets. In 2021 they did an antiwhite campaign and in 2022 they are openly collecting money for war."

occamrazor2• 3 years ago

I don’t think I understand what you mean. There are certainly fringe leftist groups in the world and in Switzerland, but this [1] is not one of them.

[1] fbschweiz.ch

drexlspivey• 3 years ago

In 2017 Russia launched the biggest cyberattack ever against Ukraine. It affected a big part of the county’s digital infrastructure including banking. People were unable to transact electronically and unable to withdraw cash from the ATM machines.

If a major conflict against 2 advanced nations ever happen I expect scenarios like this to play out. Cashless is great in times of prosperity but when shit hits the fan you need to have a backup plan.

IYasha2• 3 years ago

Time for Stallman to step in and give a speech in Europe!

fakedang• 3 years ago

Switzerland spitting out all the right moves of late.

Disclaimer: resident in CH

Cashless society in Switzerland? People to vote on keeping cash forever

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