Switzerland amends constitution to enshrine the right to cash transactions

[thewayne]

In their recent national elections, Swiss voters, by a resounding 73.4% rate, approved a measure to guarantee that people would be able to continue to make cash transactions into the future. The rate of such transactions dropped greatly with the Covid pandemic: only 30% of shop transactions were cash-based in 2024.

There are concerns that governments can trace your financial history, and if they disapprove, shut it down. Famously, Canada shut down the banking of some protesters in 2022 of the Freedom Convoy (it was later restored). There's also the difficulty of giving money to the people who are unbankable or unhoused, whether temporary or long-term.

Switzerland joins Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia in the guaranteed cash market, Austria is considering a similar proposition.

https://www.politico.eu/article/switzerland-cash-right-constitution-vote/

Comments

[disneydream06]

WOW, that is bizarre that something like even has to be considered.
Of course when you look at somethings, sporting/concert arenas are all credit cards only, I guess it's not surprising. :o :o :o
Barnes & Noble annoyed the crap out of me a couple of years back, when they stopped accepting checks. They are just cash or CC. :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

Checks are pretty much unknown in Europe, they do mostly everything - especially big transactions - either online or through phone apps.

[disneydream06]

I recently read an article about the 4-5 countries that still prefer cash transactions.
Only one I can remember now was Germany.
The percentage use to be quite high, but since the Pandemic, it's dropped to just over 50%.
But that still seems pretty high in this day and age.

[thewayne]

IIRC, I took over $500US in Euros, and some $300 in Czech Crowns with us.  Had no problems with cash transactions.  But that was in '15.  While Czechia is part of the EU, they decided to keep their currency independent so they could float the value if they needed to, and they seem to have kept their economy strong.  When Greece joined and suddenly revealed that they had a shitload of sovereign debt, the Czech economy was largely unaffected because they weren't based on the Euro.

[disneydream06]

Well, weren't they the smarty pants of Europe. :p

[thewayne]

Yep!  BTW, I had no problem getting Crowns and Euros out of my local bank.  I talked to them and they said I just needed to order the currency in advance - paying for it too, obviously - and it was delivered to the bank, I just had to pick it up!  VERY convenient.

[disneydream06]

WOW... Good bank. :)

[kaishin108]

That is such wise decisions by those countries. The last time I was in the Netherlands, no one would take my Euros, they all wanted credit cards. It was awkward as my credit card was the wrong one!

[thewayne]

That's interesting!  I made sure my Capital One was good in Europe before we went ten years ago, I'll probably make sure I have a second one before we go again.

[kaishin108]

I have a Capital One MC but it seemed like everywhere I went they wanted a Visa. My debit card is Visa but they wanted a Visa Credit card. It was odd.

[thewayne]

Huh.  We were exclusively in Germany and Czechia, no problems with cash.  Didn't really start using my credit card until we were back in Germany, and had no problems with it being an MC.  Odd.  Both of my Chase cards are Visas, I think I can get one that has no foreign fees, but it has an annual fee, so I'd get it temporarily for a trip and then cancel it if I needed one.

[kaishin108]

I'm not sure what the problem was with my card. It was just so odd.

[kathmandu]

Good for the Swiss.

[ndrosen]

I second the motion.

[silveradept]

This seems like a wise thing to do, and I'm not surprised that the Swiss are at the forefront of this, since they have their hands in a lot of various amounts of financial transactions.

[thewayne]

Quite true.  Many people talk about cashless societies, but there are a lot of ramifications on that.