Keep Some Cash Under The Mattress

When Dr Chris first moved to Sweden, I had asked him about what the cash was like - whether it was pretty, whether it was confusing - and he told me that he hadn’t seen any and didn’t expect he would any time soon because they just don’t use cash in Sweden. 

The only Swedish cash I’ve ever actually held in my grubby little mitts was brought by my mum’s partner who exchanged some before he came because he didn’t trust that a country really could be that cashless. He wasn’t being paranoid as such, just a bit behind the curve I suppose - Sweden really is that cashless and it has been for a while.

I’m not sure I quite believed Dr Chris at the time  but the figures bear it out - more on that in a bit. There is a twist though: Sweden is now actively, deliberately, trying to claw some of the cash habit back. And Britain, which still uses far more cash than Sweden does anyway, just published its own version of the same warning. It’s a much more interesting story than: ‘country goes digital, the end’.

So How Cashless Is Sweden, Really? 

The numbers are quite something! According to the 2026 Riksbank’s Payment Report (the equivalent of the Bank of England), only 5% of people said their last payment was made in cash, compared to just under 40% in 2010. Small businesses which still accept cash estimated that it now makes up only about 7% of what customers actually spend. Fifteen years ago, cash was used in four in ten purchases here, now it’s closer to one in twenty!

Of course, Covid accelerated a lot of this - not just in Sweden but everywhere. A global pandemic wasn’t on the front of most people’s minds going into 2020, but it arrived and both shoppers and shopkeepers got a crash course in digital payments overnight, contactless limits went up, ‘cash not accepted’ signs went up too and of course those habits simply stuck. Sweden was already further down that road but it definitely sped things up. 

The Bank of England estimates that the pandemic might have brought forward the decline in cash use by more than five years, based on ATM withdrawal data from 2022. It also found that the value of banknotes in circulation remained unusually high, suggesting that people were holding cash rather than spending it - sounds pretty human to me to want to hold onto something physical. 

Does Sweden’s Central Bank Trust Its Own Success? 

The Riksbank, having overseen one of the most successful cashless transitions in Europe, should surely be delighted in its success? Not quite. Instead, they have been sounding the alarm and specifically calling for new legislation to protect people’s ability to pay in cash at all - warning that the current pace of decline is leaving people behind and making the system itself more fragile. New laws have required banks to keep offering basic cash services, and the Riksbank has taken on more responsibility in regards to the physical cash infrastructure including running its own banknote depots, specifically because leaving it to a shrinking market was beginning to look risky. 

I’m aware of all of this because of Sweden’s crisis-preparedness information, which of course, takes on a different hue in the light of Britain’s very own, newly announced Be Ready campaign. Here’s where it gets interesting then. 

Two Countries, Two Leaflets, Similar Message

Sweden published its own household crisis-preparation guidance just after I moved here (a letter, sent to Dr Chris telling him that he would be expected to serve in some military capacity if it came to it, a couple of years earlier was the trigger for me to get serious about moving here). It’s the kind of booklet that tells you what to do if the power goes out, the water stops or other ways things can get difficult. It gives advice on what to collect and store in advance - food, water medicine, things to keep you warm. And cash. Specifically, it recommends keeping notes and coins in different denominations at home, in case card payments go down. 

The UK has just published its own version - the ‘Be Ready’ campaign launched last week and covers nearly identical ground - food, water, warmth, medical supplies and a recommendation to keep cash on hand. In the event of a power cut or a major technological failure, cards are just useless bits of plastic. 

There is one detail where the two campaigns diverge though - Sweden’s campaign doesn’t just recommend that you take out some cash and keep it, but it actively encourages people to use cash every so often, in real life, specifically to keep the cash economy alive. The logic is kind of civic-minded: if nobody uses cash, shops stop bothering to accept it, cash machines disappear and then having notes under the mattress won’t help you in a crisis because there’s nowhere left to spend it. Sweden got cashless fast enough that its central bank is now trying to nudge its citizens to slow the decline down so that cash remains a genuinely usable option if the digital systems ever fail. Isn’t that wild?!

Britain isn’t quite in that position yet - cash usage, whilst falling, is still meaningfully higher than Sweden’s but I would imagine that whoever is writing this stuff is aware of what’s being said elsewhere. I imagine that they had the conversations about whether to include that detail. 

Depending On Something You Can’t Touch

It’s not a question of whether cash is better than digital - or the other way round. That’s too complicated and nuanced to ever have an actual answer I think. The question is really how comfortable we are with a financial system where you simply cannot pay for things if the electricity is out, the internet is down, there’s a glitch in the bank’s systems or your phone battery dies. This isn’t hypothetical, individual banks have gone down, whole payment networks, internet networks have been throttled seemingly on purpose, for hours, days and sometimes weeks at a time. 

Financial security isn’t only about how much money you have but also includes whether you can actually get to use it when it matters. A number on a screen is real money right up until the moment when you need it and the app won’t load. 

The Future Of Cash

Cash isn’t disappearing any time soon - it hadn’t in Sweden even before the Riksbank started focussing on it. About eight in ten Swedes report keeping some cash at home even though they use it less and less day to day - it’s more of a backup than a habit, which is how both governments are really asking us to treat it. 

It strikes me that this situation that we’re in is the result of a whole series of individual decisions (often small, sensible and specific to the situation) and also a whole lot of luck and circumstance - not as much planning as we might hope goes into the future of a currency or economy. I’m glad our governments are aware and trying to steer us somewhere. 

If you’ve got cash in a drawer somewhere, you’re not just an old fuddy duddy, but absolutely up to date with the most recent financial advice. How sensible of you. 

Love Eleanor xxx

P,s.

This week’s image comes from a walk I took last week. I had been at a training meeting for the hotel job and I always try and dress reasonably for those things, because I spend the rest of my days there sweaty and stinky. I didn’t realise I’d dressed up in the colours of the forest though, so I couldn’t resist a little photoshoot.

Sometimes I can’t believe that this spot is just a few minutes from my house which is in a social housing project from the 1970’s - nothing special. Just behind the golden tree is the path which leads to an actual Viking age burial ground. Wowsers!