(WSJ) The Swiss love cash, and use it regularly to pay for purchases large and small. Their affinity shows no sign of abating, and flies in the face of a global trend toward cashless economies and electronic payments that can better track potential fraud.
“It certainly seems that the Swiss are out of kilter with the dominant trend around the world,” said Michael Levi, a professor of criminology at Cardiff University.
Experts cite a number of reasons for the Swiss affection for cash. It is a relatively safe country, making robbery or mugging less likely; it is also a predominantly rural place, where transactions have tended to be face-to-face, and money may be seen as a tangible thing to keep on hand.
To that end, the Swiss keep far more paper money on hand than citizens of other nations. Cash usage has declined since 1990, when about 90% of the money used in Switzerland was in cash: “In 2015, it was merely 60%.”