Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
I&#x27;m a Norwegian who went to a Swedish music festival last summer.<p>I couldn&#x27;t pay for a lot of things there, since the booths only accepted Swish (the only relevant Swedish mobile payment solution, it&#x27;s a de facto monopoly). I couldn&#x27;t sign up and use Swish on my phone, since it only accepts Swedish bank accounts. I couldn&#x27;t borrow money from my Swedish friends either, since they didn&#x27;t have cash (and it mostly wasn&#x27;t accepted at the festival anyway).<p>When I could get someone to pay for me directly, transferring the money back to them was hard (since the festival didn&#x27;t have any ATMs), so I had to go through the whole burdensome SWIFT procedure with getting their bank account number, their full name and address, their bank info, IBAN number of their bank etc, so I could send the money back when I got home to Norway.<p>Utopia my ass.