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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Miranda Bryant

Back to cash: life without money in your pocket is not the utopia Sweden hoped

A young woman makes a contactless payment using her phone to a food truck parked in the street
A customer buys soup from a food truck in Stockholm using the popular Swedish payments system Swish. Photograph: Idealink Photography/Alamy

In 2018 a former deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank predicted that by 2025 the country would probably be cashless.

Seven years on, that prediction has turned out to be pretty much true. Just one in 10 purchases are made with cash, and card is the most common form of payment, followed by the Swedish mobile payment system Swish, launched by six banks in 2012 and now ubiquitous. Other mobile phone payment services are also growing quickly.

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