That is partially why the banks/government in Sweden have been happy to phase it out. Companies also don't like dealing with cash because it requires extra accounting, security, and transportation. In the early 2000s there were about 50 cash transport robberies per year in Sweden, in 2018 there was 1.

> Companies also don't like dealing with cash because it requires extra accounting, security, and transportation.

At least in the US, individual businesses don't like dealing with credit because of the transaction fees but are kind of forced to thanks to everybody else taking credit everywhere.

Of course, the big chains love credit and are happy to pay the transaction cost because it lets them audit all the transactions and increase their control over local managers and employees. Presumably, the big chains also negotiate lower fees.

Somewhat tangential (sorry), but in my part of southern Europe, cash change machines seem to be getting close to ubiquitous.

I wonder if that hinders tax evasion at all since there's presumably a pretty reliable paper trail of cash transactions.

You mean ATMs ? It is still harder to prove where the cash you took out of the ATM went to in comparison to card payments, but yeah, if you take a big amount of cash out of the ATM then it would be easy to flag you

No, I mean the machines that now handle cash payments at many businesses, accepting cash and returning change.

They're increasingly common here in Portugal, at least.

ah got it. these are mostly mechanical I think and are offline / dumb device as far as I know