The Cashless Society Cometh: European Nations Such As Sweden And Denmark Are ‘Eradicating Cash’

The Cashless Society Cometh: European Nations Such As Sweden And Denmark Are ‘Eradicating Cash’

Did you know that 95 percent of all retail sales in Sweden are cashless? And did you know that the government of Denmark has a stated goal of “eradicating cash” by the year 2030? All over the world, we are seeing a relentless march toward a cashless society, and nowhere is this more true than in northern Europe. In Sweden, hundreds of bank branches no longer accept or dispense cash, and thousands of ATM machines have been permanently removed. At this point, bills and coins only account for just 2 percent of the Swedish economy, and many stores no longer take cash at all. The notion of a truly “cashless society” was once considered to be science fiction, but now we are being told that it is “inevitable”, and authorities insist that it will enable them to thwart criminals, terrorists, drug runners, money launderers and tax evaders. But what will we give up in the process?

In Sweden, the transition to a cashless society is being enthusiastically embraced. The following is an excerpt from a New York Times article that was published on Saturday…

Parishioners text tithes to their churches. Homeless street vendors carry mobile credit-card readers. Even the Abba Museum, despite being a shrine to the 1970s pop group that wrote “Money, Money, Money,” considers cash so last-century that it does not accept bills and coins.

Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic.

To me, giving money in church electronically seems so bizarre. But it is starting to happen here in the United States, and in Sweden some churches collect most of their tithes and offerings this way…

During a recent Sunday service, the church’s bank account number was projected onto a large screen. Worshipers pulled out cellphones and tithed through an app called Swish, a payment system set up by Sweden’s biggest banks that is fast becoming a rival to cards.

Other congregants lined up at a special “Kollektomat” card machine, where they could transfer funds to various church operations. Last year, out of 20 million kronor in tithes collected, more than 85 percent came in by card or digital payment.

And of course it isn’t just Sweden that is rapidly transitioning to a cashless society. Over in Denmark, government officials have a goal “to completely do away with paper money” by the year 2030…

read on: http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Cashless_Society_Cometh%3A_European_Nations_Such_As_Sweden_And_Denmark_Are_%E2%80%98Eradicating_Cash%E2%80%99/48038/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Love Always
mudra

India Goes Cashless

Nov 8, 2016 7:30 PM EST
By
Mihir Sharma

It certainly took everyone in India by surprise. But then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a flair for the dramatic. In an unexpected primetime address on Tuesday, he announced that in a few hours, millions of high-denomination currency notes would no longer be legal tender. It was the only way, he insisted, to deal with “the disease” of unaccounted-for income -- or “black money,” as it’s called in India. “Your money will remain yours,” he assured a stunned citizenry -- as long as you get around to depositing it in post offices sometime over the next several weeks.

As with everything the Indian government does, there’s a complex system of exemptions and exceptions to this demonetization. If you’re in an accident, for example, you can still pay the emergency room in 1,000-rupee notes. Also, for some reason, if you want to buy milk. Meanwhile, withdrawals from ATMs have been limited to 2,000 rupees a day for the next few days; returning bills to banks will require some form of government ID; and so on and so forth. Typically for India, a simple enough policy -- indeed, one perhaps too simplistic in conception -- somehow had enough fine print to confuse people.

Still, once India endures what could be a pretty chaotic transition, will Modi’s big idea work? There are certainly big advantages to going cashless. And black money in India is certainly a huge problem. The Indian economy is as much “informal” as it is formal -- meaning that most enterprises operate under the regulatory and legal radar. They don’t have to depend on bank accounts; cash payments are the norm. An unknown -- but certainly significantly large -- proportion of Indian national income is thus unaccounted for. It’s perhaps as much as a fifth of India’s GDP, or more than $450 billion.

read on: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-09/india-gets-rid-of-cash-too-soon

Love Always
mudra

The world most cashless countries

http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/20/the-worlds-most-cashless-countries.html?slide=1

Leaders in the mobile wallet trend

The cashless society is in full swing.

Certain start-ups threaten to make ATMs obsolete, Apple's making a big bet on mobile payments, and American Express's CEO even declared that he doesn't fear the potential demise of plastic. Current trends seemingly point to a future with increasingly less cash floating around.

For certain countries, however, that future is close to becoming a reality, as a number of nations have shifted almost entirely toward nonphysical payment.

Based on the rate of cash-free transactions and the percent of the population that relies on a debit card, here is a look at the 10 countries leading the pack toward a nearly cashless economy.

—Nicholas Duva, special to CNBC.com
Posted 21 November 2014


Love Always
mudra

Ukraine to Become Next Country to Go Cashless; Plans National Digital Currency

NOV 13, 2016

2016 has been the ‘Year of the Blockchain,’ with corporation after corporation, even nations, touting their interest and ability to use Bitcoin’s underlying advancement in their future business models. Will 2017 be the ‘Year of the National Digital Currency?’ Ukraine looks to enter the cashless society with a plan on creating their own national digital currency based on the Blockchain technology, according to Ukrainian news site Ukrinform.
Blockchain, the trend in 2016

Major corporations like IBM, and even nations, embracing the Blockchain technology is what’s happening right now, and it takes courage to be on the cutting edge. China recently announced that they would put their entire social security system on a Blockchain. Yet, creating a new national digital currency on its own Blockchain is a house of cards from Futurama. The goal here is abundantly clear, as this comes out of the nation’s Cashless Economy project, tying in with their current national payment service known as the “Ukrainian Payment Space.”

“The NBU, like other world central banks, is considering an opportunity of introducing a digital form of national currency using Blockchain technologies,” reads the report from the National Bank of Ukraine.

Don’t let the qualifier fool you. A central bank doesn’t make an announcement of this nature if the national digital currency isn’t well on its way to seeding their “Cashless Economy.” Late last year, the African country of Tunisia put their national currency on a Blockchain, the first of its kind. Bitcoin and its innovative Blockchain technology are changing the world as we speak, and that may not be a good thing in all circumstances.

When a nation moves to a cashless society, it sounds great, until you realize that no cash means no privacy and no accountability to the nation’s banks or governments. The ability to obtain and transact in cash is important for citizens because it gives them the ability to divest themselves from the banking institution if their policies, rates, service or fees are no longer competitive. The ability to move to a bank of their choice could be gone forever.

How will you hold a national currency accountable when all of your funds are in their matrix. Will you have to leave the country to avoid direct taxation or mass economic surveillance? A “run on the banks,” when depositors remove their funds all together from a bank in trouble, is the ultimate balance of economic power. Banks and governments remove this power from the people with a closed-loop, fully digital system they control. Plus, this nationwide system can easily be used to monitor and record every financial transaction for ultimate control of the populace. So cash bans are bad news because cash is one of the last bastions of privacy, liberty and personal financial control left.

read on: https://cointelegraph.com/news/ukraine-to-become-next-country-to-go-cashless-plans-national-digital-currency

Love Always
mudra

What will beggars and street vendors do??

The Indian Demonetization Disaster Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYQ8WiyJ2AU


Love Always
mudra

Swanny wrote:What will beggars and street vendors do??

Starvation ahead for many :(

Love from me
mudra

It can't work. The country will collapse

Demonetization and You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA3Nt5bLrFs


Love Always
mudra

The War on Cash: A Country by Country Guide

Corbett • 01/27/2016

Corbett Reporteers will be no stranger to the war on cash. I’ve made videos discussing it, conducted interviews about it, written articles examining it and dissected it on the radio.

The war has been waged through mainstream propaganda outlets, TV advertisements and even children’s games.

We’ve heard cash is dirtied by drug dealing, tarnished by terrorism, tainted by tax evasion (heaven forbid!) and just plain dirty. Not to mention sooooo outdated.

Just this week Norway has jumped aboard the cashless society agenda with DNB, the country’s largest bank, calling for a total end to cash. The story only sounds shocking only to people who haven’t heard the similar stories from Sweden or Denmark or India or Israel or any of the dozens of other countries whose banksters and (bankster-controlled) governments have openly lusted after a world of completely trackable, completely bank-controlled transactions.

But all of these stories, reported piecemeal here and there over the years, don’t give the full story about how this “war on cash” is being waged on every continent and in every country by the same banksters that stand to benefit from a cashless world. Let’s fix that by compiling a list of examples from around the world of how cash payments are being regulated, restricted and phased out. The list below will be updated as new stories come in.

If you have a link to relevant news from your own country or know of such news from another country, please let us know. Corbett Report members are invited to contribute to the list by logging in and leaving links to the relevant info in the comments below.

read on: https://www.corbettreport.com/the-war-on-cash-a-country-by-country-guide/

Love Always
mudra

The Other 'Ban' That Was Quietly Announced Last Week

Jan 30, 2017

Most of the world is in an uproar right now over the travel ban that Donald Trump hastily imposed late last week on citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries.

But there was another ban that was quietly proposed last week, and this one has far wider implications: a ban on cash.

The European Union’s primary executive authority, known as the European Commission, issued a “Road Map” last week to initiate continent-wide legislation against cash.

There are already a number of anti-cash legislative measures that have been passed in individual European member states.

In France, for example, it’s illegal to make purchases of more than 1,000 euros in cash.

And any cash deposit or withdrawal to/from a French bank account exceeding 10,000 euros within a single month must be reported to the authorities.

Italy banned cash payments above 1,000 euros back in 2011; Spain has banned cash payments in excess of 2,500 euros.

And the European Central Bank announced last year that it would stop production of 500-euro notes, which will eventually phase them out altogether.

But apparently these disparate rules don’t go far enough.

According to the Commission, the presence of cash controls in some EU countries, coupled with the lack of cash controls in other EU countries, creates loopholes for criminals and terrorists.

So that’s why the European Commission is now working to standardize a ban on cash, or at least implement severe restrictions and reporting, across the entire EU.

The Commission’s roadmap indicates that forthcoming legislation, likely to be enacted next year.

This is happening. And it may serve as the perfect case study for the rest of the world.

A growing bandwagon of academics and policy makers in other countries, including the United States, UK, Australia, etc. has been calling for prohibitions against cash.

It’s always the same song: cash is a tool for criminals and terrorists.

Harvard economist Ken Rogoff is a leading voice in the War on Cash; his new book The Curse of Cash claims that physical currency makes the world less safe.

Rogoff further states “all that cash” is being used for “tax evasion, corruption, terrorism, the drug trade, human trafficking. . .”

read on: https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/the-other-ban-that-was-quietly-announced-last-week-20742/

Love Always
mudra