Sweden Went Cashless. Now It Is Telling Citizens to Keep Cash Ready
May 9, 2025
Frane Maroevic, Director General, International Currency Association
In 2018, Sweden stood on the edge of a bold experiment. A former deputy governor of its central bank predicted the country would be cashless by 2025. He was almost right.
Today, just one in ten purchases are made with physical money. Cards dominate. Swish, the mobile payment app backed by Sweden’s largest banks, is everywhere, from market stalls to church donations.
The country, along with Norway, has the lowest cash in circulation as a percentage of GDP in the world.
But what looked like a digital utopia is now being re-evaluated under the cold light of geopolitical reality.
Russia's war in Ukraine, fears of hybrid cyber-attacks, and growing instability across Europe have changed the conversation. The Swedish government, once the vanguard of cashless modernity, is now urging citizens to keep and use cash for national security.
Last November, the Swedish Defence Ministry sent every household a brochure titled If Crisis or War Comes. Its message was unambiguous: citizens should use cash regularly and keep at least a week’s supply in mixed denominations.
What's the goal of the sudden u-turn? Strengthen civil defence and reduce society’s dependence on fragile, failure-prone digital systems.
We now need to think about resilience. If everything breaks down, we need to have cash.
The central bank has followed suit. Its latest payments report warns that efficiency alone can no longer guide the future of money. Accessibility and resilience are just as vital. When networks go down, whether from cyberattacks, power outages, or war, so does your ability to buy food, fuel, and medicine.
Without cash, millions are left stranded.
In a heightened situation, cash is still seen as something that you could trust and actually use, even if the power is out or the internet is out.
Sweden is not alone. Norway has taken legislative action to force retailers to accept cash. Violators now face penalties.
The government explicitly recommends that citizens hold cash as a buffer against cyber threats.
Norway's former Justice and Emergencies Minister put it bluntly: “If no one pays with cash and no one accepts cash, cash will no longer be a real emergency solution once the crisis is upon us.”
This is the digital paradox: the more a society relies on electronic payments, the less prepared it becomes for moments when those systems fail.
For years, going cashless was seen as a sign of progress. Now, it is being redefined as a potential liability.
What Sweden and Norway are discovering, through policy, practice, and plain reality, is that resilience means redundancy.
A system that only works when the Wi-Fi does, is not a system built to last.
In an era of increasing volatility, cash is not just a fallback. It is an essential tool for continuity, inclusion, and civil defence. The Nordic nations once raced to eliminate it. Now, they are racing to protect it.
It is time the rest of the world paid attention.