Cash in Sweden: the Reality

Bancomat AB was registered in 1968 in Sweden, and it is the second oldest ATM operator in the world. It was incorporated in 2010 and is owned by Danske bank, Nordea, Handelsbanken, SEB, Swedbank and some savings banks.

While the first ATM started work in June 1967 in the UK, the second started two weeks later in Sweden. A shame not to have been first given a Swedish bank issued the first European banknote in 1661 and it had the first central bank founded in 1668.

But will Sweden be the first to go cashless?

Cash today

Cash usage as a percentage of in-store payments has fallen from 39% in 2010 to 8% today. Between 2009 and 2019 Sweden had the lowest percentage increase of cash in circulation in the world, -42%. Norway was the only other country with a negative score, -23%. Despite that, Sweden had about 250 million cash withdrawals by its 11 million population in 2022 and the number of cash transactions is over 50 million per annum, and on a slightly upward trend.