Sweden has made so much progress toward turning itself into a cashless society that it now has 27% less hard cash in circulation today than it did in 2011
HSBC global economist James Pomeroy described the phenomenon in a recent note to investors: "Sweden is slowly becoming a cashless society, with more than 95% of retail sales made with electronic payment."
The reduction in Swedish hard cash is counter-intuitive because the Swedish central bank's negative interest rate policy ought to be incentivising people to withdraw cash and either spend it or hoard it. Cash in circulation ought to be going up, not down.
With interest rates for consumers close to zero — and banks adding fees to charge consumers for saving — the logical thing to do is to pull your money out of the bank. There is some evidence that may be happening. In the third quarter of 2015, the Swedish net savings rate fell to zero, according to Statistics Sweden:
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