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

[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