I lived in Sweden (Stockholm) for a year. Here&#x27;s what bothered me about the idea of &quot;cash-free&quot;:<p>1. Cards are controlled by businesses that do not have the customers&#x27; interests at heart. What&#x27;s more, it is <i>not</i> easy to become a card payment provider.<p>2. Current government may be trustable, but nobody knows what happens with the next one. The government has various forms of power over card payments which they don&#x27;t have with cash. They can trace it, they can block it, they can know every aspects of your life. And it&#x27;s not just <i>your</i> government, it&#x27;s other nations&#x27; as well in some cases.<p>So putting all your money in one basket here is putting all your purchasing power and all your privacy in the hands of businesses that cannot be competed with and institutions that are easily corrupted.<p>Electronic payments are the future, there&#x27;s no working around that. But are we going to find solutions to the privacy issues in time?