Sweden spent a decade making cash feel optional. Then it passed a law saying some shops cannot treat it as optional.

Act (2026:769) took effect on 1 July 2026. Grocery stores and pharmacies with staffed checkouts must accept cash for purchases up to 0.1 price base amount (5,920 kronor in 2026) and no more than 25 coins. There are exits: if security cannot be maintained, if the cost would force the place to close, or if there is a good reason for a single sale. The rest of the retail world can still put up the “cards only” sign.

By 2015 roughly 85 percent of physical retail transactions, restaurants included, were already card. The Riksbank still replaced the entire note and coin series between 2015 and 2017. Notes and coins that are never turned in stop being a liability on the central bank’s balance sheet. That residual becomes equity and is transferred to the state. Several billion kronor simply stayed out. The Riksbank’s own early estimates put its net cost near 150–200 million kronor; later figures came in lower once scrap metal and avoided future production were counted.

In the Riksbank’s 2025 survey, 5 percent of people said they paid cash for their last in-store purchase. Cards, including those on phones, accounted for about 92 percent. The remaining cash almost all sits in the shops now required to take it.

The grandparents’ ice-cream money used to require a visit and a handful of coins. Now it is a Swish. Physical contact declined; the transfer did not. Some parents joke that the only reliable channel left with their children is the app. As the parent of a teenager I can confirm the joke is only half a joke. Any contact counts.