Offline Card Payments Should Be Possible No Later Than 1 July 2026
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Sweden's central bank aims to enable offline card payments by July 2026, sparking discussion on the technical feasibility, implications, and potential benefits of such a system.
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Is this a typo where they meant to say “the offline function”?
If I’m reading this right, the goal is to allow food, fuel, and medicine purchases with card + PIN in offline mode.
Seems like a reasonable goal. I wonder what the technical details will look like. Will there be a periodically updated list of cancelled cards/accounts distributed to endpoints? Even a hashed list of all cards cancelled before their expiration date within a country is a reasonable amount of data for modern storage systems.
Or would they simply rely on the ability to track down account owners by their originally registered contact info in the event that someone gets an invalid transaction through during an offline period?
The UK already does this in some shops for low value items for NFC payments. You can tell the offline transactions because they immediately say 'approved' rather than taking a few seconds.
If it turns out the card approved something 'wrongly', for example because you had previously reported the card lost to the bank, then the bank refunds the transaction and claims the value back from the merchant. That's why many merchants have their terminals set to require online payments.
Offline transactions mostly died off when the limit in the UK for contactless was raised to £100. At £20/30 (the original limits) issuers/merchants risk accept some payments not being valid (and the total limit before you had to chip and pin was fairly low top).
And worth saying, the merchant has some control on the terminal but mostly the decision of offline/online is down to the issuer and configured on the card.
In the olden days, you'd get a Visa Electron or Solo debit card in the UK if you were under 18 or had a poor credit history.
Visa Electron and Solo were online authorisation-only card brands (also known as "immediate authorisation").
If you didn't have enough money in your account, the transaction would be declined. Visa Electron cards didn't have embossed numbers on the front, so couldn't be used with the old-fashioned card imprinters.
Visa Electron and Solo have been discontinued now, so people with poor credit can get a Visa Debit or MasterCard debit card, but with offline authorisation disabled.
That does mean those cards can't work in some places (e.g. on aeroplanes or trains).
Credit Cards generally always support offline authorisation.
It’s already a thing, the EMVCo standard predates ubiquitous internet connectivity. Mass transit systems typically use it, airlines used to for in-flight purchases before the advent of reliable WiFi.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV#Offline_data_authenticat...
It is somewhat common to maintain a denylist of known fraudulent cards, but as you note the main mitigation is on the bank to track the card down. One of the key things you need to figure out with an offline payment system - and what I imagine is needed here - is a consensus on who has the liability for offline transactions and what the dollar limits are.
EMV (chip cards) can have a small amount of local smarts, so it is typical for example to insist on going online for a large transaction or if the card has performed too many offline transactions since last going online. The card maker decides these rules, so the bank gets to ensure the cards it issues to customers meet whatever requirements it has decided upon, balancing fraud risk against problems with loss of connectivity or services being down.
So I doubt they'd bother doing some sort of ad hoc revocation technique.
although heavily misunderstood, this is built into cryptocurrencies since day 1 (many critics have long thought crypto requires power and internet access, many proponents also don't know otherwise)
with card networks learning from competition and functionally being public-only keys, this should be even simpler to implement
Checking the signature on some blob that says "this be money" is not enough.
For example, when each transaction is done, both parties might keep a cryptographic proof which they are required to submit once they are online again.
Failing to submit could result in a small fine (to encourage submission) and double spending which can then be detected could result in a large fine (or even a prison sentence), for example.
There is, perhaps, a privacy issue, just like with blockchain. But it's not more of an issue than online transactions.
The offline credit card system does not proof fraud but just has insurance.
Offline payment specifically allows double-spending. If you have offline payment, you don't need a ledger at all; you can just use PGP.
Even better, when you're back online the network will run a sanity check to protect against the evils of inflation.
(Note: inflation-check fees will vary between 0 and 100% per payee.)
This worked nicely until the tensions in Europe lead to more cyberattacks rolling in and suddenly you have people not being able to buy food, medicine, and so forth. Not too long after, there was a government advisory urging people to keep some cash reserves in case a larger cyberattack happens, but cultural habits at large are hard to change. This is of course a coarse simplification of the context, but might help understand this incentive a bit better.
Are you sure this isn't impression you've gotten from isolated reactions involving a small number of individuals, perhaps just a single individual? I can't relate to the sentiment at all, having lived here for just over three decades and experiencing the popularity shift from cash to debit card. I can, in fact, not recall a single time ever that someone has divulged the opinion that they consider cash "dirty and criminal".
More than anything else the Swede's favor of debit card is the convenience. Second to that I would say is the security of not immediately losing funds if you misplace the card or it being stolen - it feels less risky carrying a debit card, in particular if you're the type who prefers having more than a few "tens" on you in case you'd need or want to buy something.
https://archive.ph/v7TRe
Cash is the ultimate privacy payment.
I don't love the law, but having cash on its own is not grounds for seizure. Having expensive goods that you cannot explain how you managed to pay for is what they are targeting, according to your source.
This is basically a law that takes your expensive shit away if you are too stupid to launder your ill-gotten cash.
By the way, have you ever wondered what the definition of "expensive goods" is? Of course, the powers that be want to make it all about the Rolexes and Lamborghinis, but a cursory peek at the actual law reveals [1]:
> Section 4 If the property has been seized and the value of what may be confiscated does not exceed one tenth of the price base amount according to Chapter 2, Sections 6 and 7 of the Social Insurance Code, a question about confiscation of the property may be examined by 1. a police officer, or 2. another employee of the Police Authority or the Security Service appointed by the respective authority.
Which effectively means that using the "price base amount" value of ~59k SEK in 2025, you are subject to asset forfeiture at the whims of any police officer once you have more than 600 bucks in your wallet or under the mattress.
But I'm sure they will only use it on brown gang bangers or knife wielding foreign drunks and not law abiding citizens such as myself, so it's fine!
[1] https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...
You said: "Sweden has introduced civil asset forfeiture where the mere possession of cash can make you a suspect." in a conversation about cash in Sweden, and posted an article about how there is a law that allows police to seize goods in certain circumstance.
I pointed out that cash != luxury goods.
I already said it was a law I don't agree with. But it also isn't a law that says that police can just take cash from you according to your sources . The section that you quoted doesn't seem to support your assertion about cash either, but I need the rest of the context.
In reading the law it is allowed to seize cash under very specific circumstances, but simply possessing cash is not enough evidence to seize it.
Cash seizure ("penningbeslag") can be used in an investigation concerning independent forfeiture ("utredning om självständigt förverkande").
The initiation of an investigation and the use of "penningbeslag" are contingent on the "reason to assume that property originates from criminal activity." This implies that merely possessing cash, without any connection or suspicion of it being linked to criminal activity, would not be sufficient grounds for seizure under this law. There needs to be an antecedent suspicion that the cash is proceeds of crime.
An investigation for independent forfeiture should be initiated "if there is reason to assume that property originates from criminal activity" (2 kap. 2 §). The purpose of such an investigation is to "investigate whether the property originates from criminal activity" (2 kap. 1 §).
Therefore, the primary circumstance for cash seizure is when there is reason to believe that the cash originates from criminal activity.
> You can put lipstick on a pig all you want, but if you reverse the burden of proof from "we have to prove your money is dirty" to "you have to prove your money is clean", that is a very clear cut case of "possessing cash is grounds for seizure" to me.
Swedish law does not describe such a reversal for the initial act of seizure or investigation. As previously discussed, the law states: "En utredning om självständigt förverkande ska inledas om det finns anledning att anta att egendom härrör från brottslig verksamhet" (2 kap. 2 §). This means there must first be a "reason to assume" that the property (including cash) originates from criminal activity before an investigation is initiated and seizure measures like "penningbeslag" (cash seizure) are applied.
> Section 4 If the property has been seized and the value of what may be confiscated does not exceed one tenth of the price base amount according to Chapter 2, Sections 6 and 7 of the Social Insurance Code, a question about confiscation of the property may be examined by 1. a police officer, or 2. another employee of the Police Authority or the Security Service appointed by the respective authority.
This section, "Beslut om förverkande" (Decisions on forfeiture), discusses who can decide on the forfeiture of already seized property (beslag or penningbeslag) if its value is below a certain threshold. It pertains to the administrative decision to forfeit after the property has already been seized based on the criteria in 2 kap., not the criteria for the initial seizure itself.
When I joined my gamedev studio I had colleagues asking me why I had cash, and many of them didn’t even recognise what it looked like (there was a switchover of the notes a year or two prior).
There was an insinuation that I would use it for drugs. So, I suspect that the parent is right here.
Add.: another poster suggested that someone had a bit of a laugh with you by saying it, which is also entirely possible. Basic joke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_five-hundred-dol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_one-thousand-dol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_five-thousand-do...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ten-thousand-dol...
Your best bet of happening into a $50 is if you go to a bank for an in-person withdraw and they ask you for preferred denominations. Generally the money is dispensed in $20s even there unless specified.
Your second best bet would be if you're selling something "on the side" and the purchaser uses a $50 in a transaction, which I would say is also rare these days, most people use Venmo or equiv.
Your best bet of handling a $50 is probably as a bartender, or of course as a bank teller.
I have held $50s a few times in my life, and even my reaction is "huh, a $50, don't see those often"
Nowadays that's less common from tourists from Europe, but tourists from Asia are still likely to bring cash.
They are effectively becoming the new $20 with inflation continuing upwards, and I expect their popularity to continue to increase.
Let me introduce you to a $2 note.
I have had many places reject $100 bills though.
I’m that weirdo that tries to pay cash for most everything, so sample size is large and across a diverse set of businesses.
Due to what I tend to pay cash for these days (lunches, drinks with a friend, etc.) and prices being what they are, they are rapidly becoming my “go-to” denomination.
A friend's dad showed me one when I was at school - that's it. He seemed amused I hadn't seen one before, then after making a minor show of it, as if it was some precious, rare item, said he'd never previously seen one either. They've been uncommon my whole life, and apparently could/can be difficult to actually use, shop assistants being unfamiliar with them and not confident in their legitimacy.
I expect today most people would use bank transfers for the sort of sum where the sheer number of notes would make a £50 one useful.
But when the bill is £45, there's no problem anyway.
I felt like I was very cool considering how rare they are.
(Maybe they're a bit easier to get hold of now, especially with recent inflation? But I don't use cash as much as I did when I was younger.)
See also: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48993008
which as well as explaining the background to the note and debates over whether it should be taken out of circulation also points out the context the average British adult was making about 20 cash transactions a month as of 2018 (none of them involving £50 notes)
I believe them. Cash machines dispense(d) them, but usually only if you withdraw 1000DKK or more in a single transaction. That's unusual for people that rarely use cash.
I had them as I was following the official advice to keep some cash around in case the banking system is hacked etc, but I spent them and withdrew 100DKK notes when the advice was updated to point out that if everyone had only 500DKKs at home it wasn't very flexible.
I am slightly ashamed to realise that my banking app shows I haven't made a cash withdrawal in Denmark for more than 12 months — the second part of the official advice is to use cash occasionally to keep that system working.
No insight provided nor sources.
Just an opinion, a strong assertion, confidently stated with a tone of superiority.
Depends. Very long time ago I was approached by a group of seemingly friendly people asking for direction, then I felt sharp object to my belly and they told me to walk slowly towards cash point. They said they'll stab me if I don't withdraw all money I can. So I did. When cards were not popular, I would have small amount of cash in the wallet and anything more substantial hidden in a sock or elsewhere. Thieves would take what would be comfortable for me to lose. I guess it can be the same with cards - have a card with small amount and actual card hidden, but it is not as easy to hide as cash. Then you have whole other kettle of fish - banking apps. There's been instances of people being forced to do transfer at knifepoint. For that reason I don't use any apps, apart from throwaway bank account - again with small balance just in case. Shame more banks are restricting web access, which I think is most secure.
Wow. What country is/was that?
Swedish here. The impression is common. Sweden is a small country and has long had a fairly cohesive culture. The culture has decided that digital payments are the way. Deviation from the collective way is always suspect.
No.
Swedish here, too.
Your impression is misguided. Maybe it's the norm in Stockholm, but 80% of the population live elsewhere. We do use cash and nobody thinks its suspicious to pay with cash, stop making stuff up.
I have barely used cash in 25 years. This doesn't mean anything at all. You're probably putting this solely in the context of using cash for significantly large purchases, e.g. higher 4 digit sum or above, or as in your example a craftsman who want to exempt it from his or her accounting. Nobody bats an eye at a person buying groceries, or some gadget for a couple of hundred, with cash.
You are spewing complete nonsense.
Here's some perfectly normal stuff I use cash for in sweden on the regular:
- flea markets
- strawberry stand by the road
- unmanned vegetable shop has a cash bin and a pay-for-what-you-take sign
But I do see people paying with cash in supermarkets etc, and I don't judge them as criminals. Some people just prefer to manage their money that way.
But yeah you still give cash to kids.
But you've reminded me of a case I still use cash: on business trips abroad with a mixed group of people from several countries, most people put money on the table to pay their share.
I got caught out by a thing like this, recently. (I'm on the east coast of the US.)
My kids had a day off from school, and it was a nice day to ride bikes. There's a small municipal park around 5 miles (8 km) away, with a nice mini-golf course and a grill/cafe next to it. They were eager to go by themselves, so I told them they could ride their bikes there and gave each kid enough cash for a round of mini-golf, a cold drink and some lunch.
The park was card only! While that has been happening more and more, I was not expecting that from a city park. Thankfully, they're not shy kids, and they persuaded one of the park employees to use a personal card in exchange for cash. But I was shocked. They're 10 and 13 years old... it had not previously occurred to me that I should give them cards of any kind.
I feel sorry for you and those people.
This is what people think of when someone "uses cash". Not hauling tens of thousands to buy a used car or to settle the bill for having your bathroom tiled, which would be cases I too would raise an eyebrow over.
If a merchant tries to promote cash options I immediately think they’re doing it for tax evasion reasons - not because of the touted reason that “card payments cost more to process” (they don’t once you factor in the cost of handling cash).
With credit cards you pay a fee, but you don't have to deal with all of those other things that people often don't consider.
Where I live in Seattle, a lot of businesses simply don't handle cash at all, because break-ins for the cash register are quite expensive to deal with, and they circumvent that problem by simply posting outside the business that there is no cash.
One of the few businesses near me that must take cash, a dispensary, recently had an issue where somebody tried to break in using a stolen pickup truck to crash into the building. They didn't get the cash because they didn't get past the interior bollard system, but they did cause enough structural damage that the roof partially collapsed into the street.
I’m definitely looked as crazy in my friend group from time to time, but over the years I’ve just become known as the guy who will always have cash on him if necessary so I guess the walking ATM bit helped with acceptance of it?
I figure that if folks don’t take a stand and use cash even if they don’t need to now, we will lose the ability to later. I don’t want to live in a world where all my purchases are mineable, because that eventually turns into monitored and then authorized.
The inconvenience is a small price to pay for freedom from surveillance.
It has amused me though over the years how bad cash handling skills have become. When I was a cashier as a teenager 25+ years ago, myself and all my fellow coworkers could break change at relative light speed and often just from mental math/memory. Now it’s amusing watching a young cashier give change back on a $48.31 order after handing them a $100 bill. Sometimes takes longer than the proverbial grandma writing a check back in my day.
I believe it was part of an agreement with the card companies over anti-competitive behavior.
What's your opinion on that? In NA, for small businesses it's common to offer to pay in cash to avoid paying sales tax.
It's also not common (and illegal).. this account posts a lot of vague platitudes.
This is almost always in a portion of the invoice written up at around half the agreed amount, and the rest in cash. Or for smaller jobs just on the side with no paperwork involved outside of a firm handshake.
This is the norm for the lower end of the trades. If you’re dealing with a single owner company with a few employees I’d be very surprised if they would not be willing.
Yeah, once you get into “real companies” that are charging upper middle class rates on million dollar properties it changes.
I haven’t had trades work done in Mexico, but considering all my visits were effectively cash only transactions I’d be pretty surprised if it wasn’t at least as common as in the US.
I don't know about Australia, but in New Zealand many small retailers and restaurants add a card payment surcharge (typically 1.5%-2.5%) automatically when you pay by card. So you are somewhat penalised for the convenience of using a card. This never happens in Europe.
Visa and Mastercard have successfully lobbied and conspired with local banks in both countries to bury EFTPOS, which were national debit card payment systems with a flat transaction fee ranging between 10 and 50 cents per transaction (depending on the bank).
A while back, Visa/MC realised that debit card transactions, being on the rise, were a highly lucrative market to tap into that they had been missing out on, so they set out on a war of attrition and conspired with the local big banks to phase out EFTPOS cards in favour of Visa/MC debit cards, where the cost of transaction was to be passed on to the card user. Tiered debit cards quickly followed (Platinum, etc.), that attracted higher fee percentages for Visa/MC – payment network commission fees are published on the respective payment network websites. Other than consumers, all parties involved (big banks, payment networks) became moist with excitement at getting a huge slice of the card transactions pie.
But there is the light at the end of the tunnel (other than the light of the oncoming train) – the RBA has moved to ban all card surcharges from July 2026.
In the EU you can not charge a card fee on consumer transactions, so the merchant has the eat the cost.
If your revenue is - 2-3000 Eur a month, payment fees (and terminal subscription fees) can have a big impact.
If I were charging £3k/month, I'd be just above the threshold where paying £19.99/month to get a transaction fee of 0.99% saves money overall.
Additionally, and specifically in Sweden, the fees that banks charge businesses for handling cash (picking it up and depositing it at the end of each business day) have increased significantly in the last decade or two. This has been a significant factor in driving businesses away from cash - it's just expensive for them to deal with.
The US has a much less secure system specifically because there was much less credit card fraud in the US than in Europe.
Chip and PIN was an attempt to combat the rampant fraud in Europe.
It may be true at this point, I haven’t been tracking recently, but it wasn’t in the past.
So if you are a law abiding citizen you can easily be pissed off that you get to pay taxes and they don't.
For a few years "we don't take card" was widely interpreted as a strong indicator the merchant would evade taxes, and "I won't go there anymore" was a common reaction from some people. These days it's technically illegal and yet you will still find _some_ shops that only want cash.
That seems totally fair if they can’t pass that cost on to you for using a card. Why should they have to pay to accept your patronage?
And you didn’t answer why you shouldn’t pay that fee.
At this point the cost of handling cash is way higher than handling cards and as no one in Sweden ever uses cash its no longer relevant at all anyway. Now many (maybe even most?) dont accept cash to avoid the cost of handling cash instead.
(The fact that credit card networks continue doing business in Europe proves they're still profitable and the US is getting ripped off by these fees)
Paying for a used car in cash would actually be difficult because handling an amount greater than the equivalent of around USD $1k immediately starts tripping KYC/AML flags at any bank if you try to deposit it, and it's hard to use in day to day life because few places other than grocery stores even accept cash anymore.
Honestly, that system sounds a bit Orwellian. But also, does that mean that you have to pay a bank transfer fee every time you buy anything?
No, not at all. The Swish rails are free to users. But I've never had to pay any transfer fees for domestic transfers anyway. They are just much slower than using Swish (instant transfers) and much more clunky (bank account number etc. vs. phone number/QR-code).
It's also worth noting that credit card interchange fees are price controlled in Europe; there's a EU directive that caps the interchange fees at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. Because of this, cashback on credit cards is pitiful in the EU; you can get 0.5% cashback but not much more than that.
Tradespeople sometimes request cash payment or provide a good discount for cash payments (well above any fee they would be charged). I guess where you are no one considers this dubious (really???) but at least in discussions with family the feeling is that the request for cash only payment is dubious.
We also have a local retail establishment that is cash only. I think it's looked at dubiously.
I personally have experienced it. Someone wanted to split payment on something between cash and a check so they could report the value of the item was lower because it would save them taxes every year. Again, the use of cash was I think a bit dubious.
Note: Cash allows you to avoid all sorts of obligations (tax / family support / debt collection and garnishment etc etc), ineligiblity for banking (europe is pretty strict in some cases for example with folks with no legal status with banking) and is still used in things like the drug trade. Even if everyone around you considers large cash transactions reasonable that might be naivety or they may simply not have been exposed to larger cash transaction activity.
I do like and carry cash.
it's really visa lobbying to destroy the (somehow worse than visa) easy credit new players. they give credit like candy because being online and low value only it's easier to avoid (or swallow) fraud.
forcing their hand to accept offline sales mean they can't decide on the spot, and now those 5k credit lines which they only allow transactions for sub 100 purchases at a time will be wide open for offline fraud they can't detect, and which visa already know how to handle/sustain.
this will probably be lobbied elsewhere soon. i predict Netherlands is next.
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