"Over the past 10 years, the value of card payments made in Sweden has increased fivefold, while the number of card payments has increased by a factor of eight.
'The technology exists for a cashless society to work,' says Andrew Scott, Professor of Economics at the London Business School.
Cash survives, he says, despite the nuisance of bulging pockets and looking for ATMs that work, partly because it preserves privacy.
'Its key advantage, in an electronic age, is that it is anonymous and tells you nothing about where it's been,' he says.
Par Strom, of the New Welfare Foundation in Stockholm, says Sweden's move towards a cashless society is worrying for precisely this reason.
'If it's impossible to pay cash when you buy stuff, it's also impossible not to leave electronic footprints behind you, and the electronic footprints from what you buy put together can tell the entire story about your life. This can be very sensitive information,' he says.
'Most people don't want this total surveillance society....more
