Ad esempio, gli argomenti a favore del contante potrebbero essere che è difficile rubare molto rispetto a una carta di credito rubata che rappresenta il risparmio di tutta una vita, nessuna commissione bancaria, nessun problema bancario, nessuna carta rifiutata, maggiore libertà, meno potere alle banche/governo in caso di controllo tirannico (come congelare il tuo conto bancario per aver detto qualcosa che non piace allo stato), migliore controllo della spesa, dare le tue informazioni personali a meno app telefoniche, in caso di guerra il paese occupante (ad esempio la Russia) non può bloccare la tua banca come ha fatto Israele in Palestina….
Quali sarebbero gli argomenti a favore dei pagamenti con carta/contro contanti da parte dei finlandesi?
https://i.redd.it/cfhm3qauqd7g1.png
di Such_Housing_6850
30 commenti
I wouldn’t say that we are particularly anti-cash, but card and mobile payments are just so easy and reliable here.
Also for smaller businesses cash causes some certain costs and troubles that may not be worth it.
I’d assume Finnish people never had to fear most of the reasons you have brought up against back card usage. On the other hand, it’s more convenient and quicker.
It’s easier
We are not anti-cash, we are a highly digitalized country which predominantly uses other payment methods than cash.
It’s just so much easier to not carry cash around. No loose change in the pocket etc. I think in Finland people trust the government and “system” so tyrannical control is not something people generally are afraid of. Bank fees are also fairly low as there’s a lot of competition around, many customer groups (e.g. people under 30) don’t pay any card/banking fees
For me, mainly because it’s a hastle to carry cash around. Also, hastle to pay with cash since you gotta deal with change. With card or app whatever you use you just push it against the machine and you are done.
But some spare cash can still be good in-case something unexpected happens. Otherwise, haven’t paid with cash in years.
I don’t even carry wallet with me most days. I pay everything with phone.
Bank card is more convenient and also businesses can’t commit (tax)fraud that easily when using bank cards.
Expensive to handle (for businesses), easier to rob at smaller stores/kiosks, and money being mostly digital makes it easier to track money flow which in turn makes it harder to avoid taxes or misuse social welfare.
Much easier, less germs. I don’t agree with safety issues and you can’t lose your life savings if you lose your card. Probably you won’t lose anything. If you lose your cash, you lose it forever. Banking fees? You need bank to get your salary. If your boss pays you with cash you’re a criminal.
less of a hassle to just pay via card or apple pay.
For me it’s a matter of simplicity.
I need a credit card anyway (e.g. big online purchases). I can also pay everything with a credit card. So I just stopped carrying cash around many years ago. I do everything with the one mode of payment that’s unavoidable anyway.
It’s also safer in many ways. I don’t need to carry physical cash. I can also keep only a minimal amount of cash on my back account. Plus the credit card company protects me in case of fraud.
Yes, Finland is anti cash. In some shops, you cannot pay with cash anymore.
I haven’t carried a single piece of cash with me for a decade. I think it’s made life much easier and much simpler.
> it’s hard to steal much compared to a stolen credit card being your whole life savings,
Credit card isn’t your whole life savings. Credit card is credit and that has a limit.
>no banking fees
There are no banking fees for people who pay with a card
>better control of spending
Control of spending is much better when you pay digitally. All the payment information is always available to review.
>giving your personal information to less phone apps
This has nothing to do with cash
>in case of war the occupying country (for example Russia) can’t block your bank like Israel did in Palestine.
In case of war an occupation, the occupying force would steal your cash
For companies it’s more expensive to constantly deposit cash to the bank than paying for payment terminal fees. In most countries that’s vice versa.
Because we are not neanderthals.
Stolen credit card won’t get you far. You still need PIN number. And online purchases are behind 2-way authentications.
Card is easier to carry. It’s faster. No need for pocket change. It makes it easier to watch your own money use. More hygienic. I have never paid for card, it’s always been free to use.
Shops also prefer card because it’s faster, less need to store coins, it’s more hygienic, and makes stores less likely to get robbed.
The reasons to use cash are really rare. I haven’t used cash in 10 years, except one time when there was a large scale outage.
I would argue it’s harder to steal your money if you use a card. You can just put a withdrawal and payment limits, for anything over 50€ you need the PIN code anyway and the card occasionally asks for PIN code even for smaller purchases so it gets locked if the thief doesn’t know it. Where as if someone steals your cash it’s just gone.
Also who puts their “life savings” in the same account that is accessed by the card? You put them in the separate savings account or investments.
And credit cards are actually safer than cash or debit cards because if you get scammed you can contact the credit card company and cancel the payment and lock the card.
But most importantly the cards are so so so much more convenient than cash. I don’t need to worry about just running out of cash and finding an ATM.
Not much savings if a stolen credit card can destroy your life savings. Banking fees are exactly the same whether you use cash or card.
Cards & electronic payments are easier, faster & safer. No risk of counterfeits, lost card can be closed instantly online/via phone. Lost cash is lost, but unless gross negligent then you’re not responsible for fraudulent credit card use in case of e.g. syolen card.
Not to mention chreaper for the stores accepting them.
The no banking fees and issues is simply not true for cash. You just have to pay that in a different time/manner. Most people got their salary in digital money, not physical, meaning you have to convert it. That is inconvenient.
Stolen credit card (which can be tied to a separate amount, not your entire life savings) can be used with much greater difficulty, than stolen cash.
Also transporting and storing cash has its price. Its not something explicit, but you have to go to an ATM to withdraw some amount, then you have to take the cash with you in a secure manner.
I also run into issues, when the store didn’t have much cash traffic, thus it could not give back exact change. It is rare, and I don’t know the legal framework, but I don’t think one can force the store to give back exact amount, when it is not available at the time.
It takes 2 seconds to tap the phone I already have on hand on the payment processor.
On the other hand cash is dirty, you end up with a wallet full of useless coins that take space and you never know what to do with them, it must be counted every time you pay and you can run out.
Also the arguments you put out.
> For example pro-cash arguments would be that it’s hard to steal much compared to a stolen credit card being your whole life savings
Why do you have your life savings on your checking account and not your savings account? Do you carry all your life savings in your pockets? No. So why do you think we have our life savings on our credit card? It takes 5 seconds for me to transfer money from my savings account to my checking account.
Also who is going to steal my credit card in the first place? This is Finland. There are no pickpockets and even if there were my credit card has a pin code and 2 factor authentication for online payments.
> no banking fees
What banking fees? I don’t pay anything to use my card. Stores do but why would I care for that? Cash also has fees for the shops because it needs to be counted and stored.
> no banking issues, no declined card
Last 20 years I’ve used my card there has been one time my bank was down and my credit card couldn’t be used. I just used my another credit card from a different bank.
> greater freedom
What do you mean?
> less power to banks/government in case of tyrannical control (like freezing your bank account for saying something the state doesn’t like)
Just lol. When has anything even remotely close to that happened in Finland?
> better control of spending
My banking app tells me exactly how I’ve used money in the last month. Like it tells me how much money I used for petrol and how much for food. So I’d argue the exact opposite.
> giving your personal information to less phone apps
GDPR exists you know. Stores can’t save my information just because I use a credit card.
> in case of war the occupying country (for example Russia) can’t block your bank like Israel did in Palestine….
Again just lol. Cards also work just fine in Ukraine.
Salary and benefits go directly to your bank account digitally and the easiest way to access it in your daily life is by card. You can use card practically anywhere. Otherwise you’d need to go to atm daily for petty cash or make one huge withdrawal and have to carry large amount of cash which most people actually don’t like to do.
For example: closest atm to me is 5km, nearest market is 500m.
Afaik banks limit and take cash handling fees specially from companies so many smaller shops don’t take cash so that they don’t need to store it (risk of break-in) and pay bank so much service fees vs having card reader in tablet.
I have a small tractor. I bought some implements to it to plow snow, make firewood and such. Made a few miss buys and had to sell them. Well well, the “vanhan liiton mies” always showed up and bought with cash. And big notes.
It was absolutely pain to get rid of the big bills anywhere. Some places dont even take 50E bills.
We have lived here at rural area for 5 years and 1 time i needed cash. My wife got back from abroad and came home in a taxi. Taxi card-reader had no signal so only method to pay was cash.
Finland is not anti-cash. Finland is pro efficiency. It’s so much easier to only have one plastic card with you than carry a full wallet. It’s usually faster to pay with card. Cash usage went down a lot during the pandemic as using cash was discouraged and lots of places refused to take cash since it’s super dirty. And it hasn’t recovered from that and most of those places that did not accept cash then still don’t.
Also some of your arguments are not that valid for Finland or at least me personally.
Everyone I know has a card account and other accounts. Card account is the only one that thieves get access to if your cards gets stolen and nobody keeps a lot of money there. At most there is 100euro on my card account. I just transfer money if I need to purchase something bigger.
I have bank fees only for my credit card account my other accounts are free. So banking fees are not a factor for me at least. For bank delays/issues I have accounts in two different banks to prevent this. They have never had issues at the same time. So for me that’s also not a problem
The government cannot freeze bank accounts because of what people say. If I lived in an autocracy instead of democracy I might be worried about that but until Finland is a dictatorship I will continue to trust in the legal protections I have.
About the war situation I am as prepared as Finn’s are instructed to be. At least 3 days worth of food and water and also enough cash to survive a couple of months (without paying rent).
I have better money management when I use cards. For me cash feels like “free” money since my bank balance stays the same. Also I can track where I use money without making excels myself since my bank does that for me.
As others have already pointed out, I don’t believe your pro-cash arguments are valid, at least not in Finland.
Also, I wouldn’t say Finland is anti-cash; it’s just much easier and safer to carry a card or phone and pay with it.
Cash is also an easy(or easier) way to avoid taxes
Most of those pro-cash arguments don’t make any sense to me. How is it easier to steal and why would someone have their whole life savings in their day-to-day card?
Better control of spending is also very debatable. Tracking your spending while doing it in cash sounds terrible to me. Like save receipts and type them in somewhere manually?
Rest of it seems very far fetched to be the case for Finland atm.
Anti-cash isn’t quite right, you can use cash basically everywhere. Only exception I can think of are some small businesses.
Someone stealing my debit/credit card wouldn’t result in me loosing all my money thanks to spending limits. In the worst case scenario where someone’s made off with all my cards and somehow knows the pin codes to all them, I’d lose like 1.5k ish. And that’s extremely unlikely to happen, because 1; Finland and 2; that’s a ridiculous scenario.
Banking fees; I’m gonna need a bank account and card anyway, might as well use them. As for transaction fees, those aren’t really a thing, atm fees maybe, but why would I even want to withdraw cash?
Banking issues; uhhh, yeah sure I guess, that would be a pain if it ever happened
Greater freedom; all the freedom I need is freedom from a 5cm thick leather wallet
Less power to banks/government; I will admit, Riika Purra has been kinda silly since… well always. But apart from that I feel like everyone is low-key kinda chill atm. Plus, if we ever get to that point it’s all over anyways.
Better control of spending; Valid, as long as you meant it in the sense that one would be more cognisant of how much they’re spending.
Giving your personal information to less phone apps; That’s always a good idea, but I don’t think people are really doing that anyway apart from the necessary-ish ones, aka MobilePay (paypal-like), Tori (FB-marketplace), <insert your bank here>-mobile and government ones. And those are trusted companies, they’re not gonna pawn off your data except for maybe the basic stuff, but that’s already out there.