“It’s a very big problem. For small businesses, it costs so much money to put cash in the bank,” says Guido Carinci, chairman of small business association, TOMER. Carinci, describes the situation as “awful,” saying he has to pay a fee of 300 Swedish kronas (about $35) every month to a company that is then able to deposit cash into his bank account.

It all comes down to profit margins. Swedish banks, he says, profit handsomely from charging transaction fees to retailers for card payments, amounting to millions of kronas annually for the banks, whereas there is no revenue generated on cash. This leaves banks little incentive to accept currency.

Citing the high costs of handling cash and security concerns, many Swedish stores have already abandoned their cash tills, including telecommunications giant Telia Company, whose 86 shops nationwide stopped accepting cash in 2013. The country’s buses haven’t accepted currency from passengers for years, and even homeless magazine vendors accept card and mobile payments these days.

The problem has become so bad that many of Sweden’s residents, facing the dilemma of what to do with piles of cash that banks don’t want, are even resorting to “hiding it in the microwave,” according to Björn Eriksson, head of security industry alliance Säkerhetsbranschen.

