Article originally published in October 2021, updated in May 2023.

I’ve lived in Sweden for almost a year now. I did my daily groceries, took taxis, went on public transport, ordered take away and even bought an apartment. Despite all these transactions, I can honestly say I would not know what a krona looks like for the simple reason that I’ve never seen one. Well, as a paper napkin once, but that wasn’t legal tender.

Before moving, I had heard about Sweden going cashless and Stockholm being the pilot city for that experiment. But I was sceptical. It sounded like something governments say to make themselves seem more modern and digital. It is also something banks like to say to justify closing branch offices.

Maybe my scepticism stemmed from having lived in Hong Kong which is incredibly cash focused and where many transactions were still settled by cheque as if it were the 80s. This was not improved by living in Switzerland where I worked at a bank. The bank was always propagating to its clients to do all their banking online and not bother with cash. The Swiss senior bankers, and the Swiss themselves in general, would walk around with hundreds of Francs in cash in their wallets; just in case they felt the urge to buy a second-hand car at short notice, I presumed.

The adjustment to full cashless feels a little like when they banned smoking from restaurants and bars: at first you think it will be weird. After about two weeks of going to smokeless restaurants, you wondered what maniac allowed people to smoke inside while you were having dinner in the first place.

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The same goes for cash when you think about it. Your employer puts the money in your bank account. You queue at an ATM to get it out and then when you go to buy groceries, you give it to a supermarket who then bring it back to their bank in an armoured truck, who put it in the supermarket’s bank account. Why not take the money from your bank account and put it in the supermarket’s bank account directly and cut out the circus in the middle?

After 11 months of no cash, I’m completely adjusted and excited. I happily bleep and Swish and don’t miss the pot of coins on my desk in the slightest. It also seems that Swedish society has adapted well. Except at Systembolaget, where someone occasionally pays with cash, nearly everyone from young to old pays with their phone or card without blinking.

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This made me wonder why Sweden seems so far ahead of other countries in this regard. One thing a colleague mentioned was a clever safety angle used to push the cashless society. An abundance of cash everywhere is a risk for those handling it. It’s the same reason most countries justified the smoking ban: health and safety of staff working in restaurants and bars.

In addition, I suspect that Swedes enjoy the modernity of abandoning the pot of coins on their desks to lead the way to the cashless future ahead of the rest of the world.

Alexander de Nerée moved to Stockholm with his husband in October 2020. He is Dutch, but moved from Zürich, Switzerland, after having lived in Hong Kong for 10 years. Signing up to move to a country they had never been to, in the middle of a global pandemic, was definitely a first for the couple. One of many more to come. Alexander writes for The Local about his “firsts” in Sweden.