正當瑞典前行，那麼世界也前行：現金終結的開始

正當瑞典前行，那麼世界也前行：現金終結的開始
As Sweden Goes, So Goes the World: The Beginning of the End of Cash
Mar 19 2012, 11:14 AM ET
Translation by Autumnson Blog

Sweden could be pointing the way to a (nearly) cash-free economy.
瑞典可能在指向（近乎）無現金經濟的道路。

There are many, many things to dislike about analog money. Cash and coins are unwieldy. They're heavy. They're dirty. They leave no automatic record of the financial transactions that are made with them.
有很多很多的事情不喜歡模擬金錢，現金和硬幣都是不靈便的，它們是沉重的，它們是骯髒的，它們沒有遺下與它們做出的金融交易的自動記錄。
Here in the U.S., despite Square and PayPal and other services that would seem to herald the end of cash, bills and coins still represent 7 percent of our total economy. In Sweden, however -- which ranked first in this year's Global Information Technology Report from the World Economic Forum -- cash is scarcer. And it's becoming, the AP reports, scarcer still. While Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661, it's now come farther than any other country in the attempt to eradicate them. In most Swedish cities, the AP notes,
在美國這裡，儘管廣場和貝寶及其它服務看似預示著現金的終結，鈔票和硬幣仍然代表著我們經濟總量的7％。但在瑞典 -- 在來自世界經濟論壇今年的全球信息技術報告排名第一 -- 現金是愈見鳳毛麟角，據美聯社報導，及它仍變得更稀缺。雖然瑞典是第一個歐洲國家在1661年推出紙幣，它現在來得比其它任何國家更前企圖去消滅它們。在瑞典的大多數城市，美聯社指出，

public buses don't accept cash; tickets are prepaid or purchased with a cell phone text message. A small but growing number of businesses only take cards, and some bank offices -- which make money on electronic transactions -- have stopped handling cash altogether.
公共巴士不接受現金；門票都以一通手機短信預付或購買。一小型卻越來越多的企業只取卡，及一些銀行辦事處 -- 在電子交易上做錢 -- 已完全停止處理現金。

Even houses of worship are becoming increasingly friendly to cash-free transactions: At the Carl Gustaf Church in Karlshamn, southern Sweden, Vicar Johan Tyrberg recently installed a card reader to allow worshipers to tithe in digital form.
甚至崇拜的機構變得對無現金交易越來越友善：在瑞典南部Karlshamn的卡爾·古斯塔夫教會，教區牧師約翰·Tyrberg最近安裝一部讀卡器，讓信徒以數碼形式交付十一奉獻。
This isn't, right now, the end of cash -- in Sweden or anywhere else. As Lars Nyberg, the deputy governor of Sweden's central bank, put it last year: Cash will survive "like the crocodile, even though it may be forced to see its habitat gradually cut back." But it may be the beginning of the end. Sweden's innovations suggest a future in which cash is increasingly rare.
眼下這不是現金的終結 - 在瑞典或任何其它地方。正如瑞典央行副行長拉爾斯·尼伯格去年所說：現金將“像鱷魚生存，即使它可能會被迫看到它的棲息地逐漸削減。”但它可能是結束的開始，瑞典的創新提出一個現金越來越罕見的未來。

A cash-reduced culture gives rise to new concerns -- of cybersecurity and, of course, about privacy. Oscar Swartz, the founder of Banhof, Sweden's first Internet provider, puts it like so: "One should be able to send money and donate money to different organizations without being traced every time."

But a cashless world could also lead to some significant social improvements. Swedish crime statistics, fascinatingly, seem to suggest a correlation between cash and crime. The number of bank robberies in Sweden has dropped from 110 in 2008 to 16 in 2011 -- "the lowest level," reporter Malin Rising notes, "since it started keeping records 30 years ago." The Swedish Bankers' Association also says that robberies of security transports are down.

The benefits seem to cut more broadly, as well. Sweden has less of a problem with graft, the AP says, than countries with a stronger cash culture. "If people use more cards, they are less involved in shadow economy activities," economics professor Friedrich Schneider argued. And others note that a cash-reduced culture will disincentivize pickpocketers and muggers: When a card can simply be cancelled, what's the point?


Image: Reuters/Scanpix Sweden.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/as-sweden-goes-so-goes-the-world-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-cash/254713/

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