Stockholm’s homeless magazine vendors no longer need to ask if you can spare any kronor, because now they take credit cards. In the most cashless society on the planet, a few of the sellers of Situation Stockholm, a culture magazine hawked by the homeless, were equipped in September with portable card readers to accept payments from fellow Swedes. The move marks a world first, according to their employer.
“More and more of our sellers come in and say that people don’t have cash; they have told us this for a long time,” says Pia Stolt, the magazine’s chief executive officer. “This became frustrating, but now they feel they offer an opportunity to buy the paper.”
In Sweden, which printed Europe’s first bank notes in 1661, bills and coins represented just 2.7 percent of the economy in 2012, compared with an average 9.8 percent in the euro area and 7.2 percent in the US, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Many Swedes think 2.7 percent is too high. “We could and should be the first cashless society in the world,” Björn Ulvaeus, a former member of Abba, says on the website of a Stockholm museum dedicated to the Swedish band. Situation Stockholm, which costs fifty kronor and whose cover stories feature Swedish celebrities such as pop star Robyn and actress Noomi Rapace, already can be bought via a text-message service.
By supplying its street vendors with card readers from Swedish mobile-payments company iZettle, the magazine is seeking to accelerate sales. “This will make it easier to sell the magazine, and I also think this changes a little the image that people have of our sellers,” who keep fifty percent of the money they take in from peddling the magazine, Stolt says.
Five of Situation Stockholm’s 350 vendors are using the equipment, and the publication decided to introduce the devices on a broader scale after its initial trial increased sales. “Before, everyone said they don’t have cash or that they cannot pay with their mobile phones because it was a corporate phone. But now they can’t get away,” magazine vendor Stefan Wikberg says as he stands outside the subway entrance at Stockholm’s T-Centralen station. “I take cards, SMS payments, cash, and they can also pay in dollars and euros.”
Cards are also the only form of payment at Abba the Museum, where Ulvaeus is an investor. Ulvaeus— whose hits with Abba included the song Money, Money, Money— lived for a year without coins and notes, and says the only inconvenience he found “was that you need a coin to borrow a trolley at the supermarket.” SEB, Swedbank, and Nordea Bank, three of Sweden’s four largest banks, have stopped offering cash-handling services by tellers in 65 percent to 75 percent of their local branches. Over the past twelve months, the number of ATM transactions decreased by eleven percent, according to Swedbank.
Situation Stockholm was initially concerned that Swedes would hesitate to use a credit card on the street. “This was one of the things we were wondering about—how safe people would feel with iZettle and this card reader, but they do,” CEO Stolt says. “Now we will reach people who actually never carry cash.”
Situation Stockholm is a culture magazine that costs fifty kronor and features stories on Swedish celebrities, such as pop star Robyn and actress Noomi Rapace from the movie The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
It’s also sold by the homeless, who keep fifty percent of the money they take in from peddling the magazine. In September, five of the magazine’s 350 vendors were equipped with portable card readers to accept payments from fellow Swedes. This marks a world’s first. “More and more of our sellers come in and say that people don’t have cash,” says Pia Stolt, the magazine’s chief executive officer. “They have told us this for a long time.”
The magazine can already be bought via a text-message service. And now, by supplying its street vendors with card readers from Swedish mobile-payments company iZettle, Situation Stockholm is seeking to accelerate sales.
After the trial increased sales, the publication decided to introduce the devices on a broader scale. Stolt adds that this also changes the image that people have of their sellers. “Before, everyone said they don’t have cash or that they cannot pay with their mobile phones because it was a corporate phone. But now they can’t get away,” says vendor Stefan Wikberg outside a subway entrance. “I take cards, SMS payments, cash, and they can also pay in dollars and euros.”
In Sweden, which printed Europe’s first bank notes in 1661, bills and coins represented just 2.7 percent of the economy in 2012, compared with an average 9.8 percent in the euro area and 7.2 percent in the US, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
Three of Sweden’s four largest banks have stopped offering cash-handling services by tellers in up to 75 percent of their local branches. Over the past twelve months, ATM transactions numbers decreased by eleven percent.
“We could and should be the first cashless society in the world,” says Abba member Björn Ulvaeus.
Rico says that's all well and good, but he likes cash (even though he operates with a debit card most of the time), and so do criminals...
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