By Paul Coleman
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| © London Intelligence, May 2018 |
‘Money Money Money’
chorused Abba, one of Sweden’s most successful exports.
The quartet’s 1976 hit replays
in my jukebox brain - especially after visiting the
Abba Museum.
But a war against cash seems a dim and very distant prospect in the city of meatballs and mooseburgers. People in this tranquil place
seem at peace.
They stroll towards an 18th
Century windmill through the flower-strewn and sun-drenched gardens of
Waldemarsudde.
They admire Prince
Eugene’s elegant waterfront mansion that dominates a craggy yet verdant headland on
the island of Djurgården, an oasis in the heart of Stockholm.
Crisis or war
Yet the Swedish government
is sending a pamphlet, If Crisis or War
Comes, to its 4.8 million households. They want Sweden’s 10 million people to
be prepared for the worst – such as ‘serious accidents, extreme weather and IT
attacks, to military conflicts’.
The government doesn’t trust
Putin’s Russia – and has reintroduced military service for 4,000 18-year-olds a
year. Sweden now permanently stations troops on its Baltic Sea island of
Gotland.
The pamphlet asks ‘what
would you do if your everyday life was turned upside down?’ If, for instance,
the shops run out of food, or, heaven forbid, ‘payment cards and cash machines
do not work’.
War on cash
Leaving Russophobia aside,
Sweden has already declared war on cash. The Abba Museum doesn’t want my SEK
(Krona) notes and coins.
Card payments are the only
‘Money Money Money’ that Abba’s Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid will accept.
Neither can I pay with SEK
cash in the Irish-themed restaurant at Stockholm Arlanda Airport.
Predatory
Sweden seems hell-bent on
becoming the world’s first cashless society. Some experts say Sweden could
jettison paper and metal money within a decade. Two thirds of consumers say
they can do without cash and most use cards to make payments under 100 SEK (£8.54,
€9.74).
Cash is used to make only
13% of all payments.
Control
Why? Cards are more
convenient.
Swedes are also told a cashless economy reduces the risk of tax
evasion, forgery and predatory street crime. Cash is the mother of violence,
apparently, not fear.
However, the lack of cash
has also pressed the Riksbank to ponder the creation of a crypto-currency.
Sweden’s central bank believes it can control the supply of such an e-Krona
just as it controls the supply of banknotes and coins.
E-Krona
But what happens to such an
e-Krona when there is a ‘situation of financial unease’, as the Riksbank says,
meaning a banking crisis? ‘There is a risk that there would be no rapidly
available freestanding alternative such as cash is at present,’ admits the
bank.
Back to the mint, then, and
the printing press, as the sirens wail.
Ambition
Could London follow
Stockholm and try to become a cashless city? A big part of daily London life
operates as cashless. London’s 3.75 million daily tube users have used Oyster
‘top-up’ cards since 2003. Bus drivers have not accepted cash for several
years.
Transport for London bosses
even reportedly harbour an ambition to phase out Oyster card payments in order
to close ticket offices, ‘top-up’ machines and further cut staff costs.
Tube users are plagued by repeated
announcements: ‘Why not use your contactless bank card today? Never top again,
and it’s the same fare as Oyster.’
Oyster cling
Not every Londoner believes
that last bit. So, many passengers cling to their Oysters whilst others
blithely touch in and out with their bank cards and smart phones.
Furthermore, trust in banks
remains persistently low since the credit crunch and the banking and financial
meltdown of 2007-09, aggravated by banking system failures, such as TSB’s
online failure of late Spring 2018.
Some also fret that banks might
use electronically collated travel information to target them with station adverts
for financial products.
Need money
Wider still, not every
Londoner on lower incomes has access to debit cards, overdrafts and credit.
Cash might no longer be convenient but people still need
money – and Abba too.*
World War III, though, we can all do without.
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| Inside the Abba Museum...© London Intelligence May 2018 |
* Abba have announced they
will record new songs again after 35 years.
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