Sweden’s Riksbank urges households to keep cash and multiple payment options for crisis preparedness

Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, is urging households to strengthen their ability to make everyday payments in the event of disruptions, warning that the current international situation, combined with Sweden’s high level of digitalisation, may expose vulnerabilities in the national payments system.

The bank frames the advice as part of national preparedness, describing the public as a key component of ‘total defence’ of Sweden and stressing that resilience in the payments market is essential during temporary outages, wider crises and, in the worst case, war.

The Riksbank’s main message is that households should avoid relying on a single way to pay and instead ensure they can use several methods, including cash, cards and mobile payment services. As a benchmark, it recommends keeping SEK 1,000 in cash per adult at home to cover about a week of essential purchases, while noting that some households may need more or less depending on size and circumstances.

Where possible, it advises keeping cash in multiple denominations and encourages people to use cash occasionally in normal times to help keep the cash system functioning.

For card payments, the bank recommends having access to at least two cards from different card networks, such as Visa and Mastercard, so that if one network is disrupted, another may still work. It also highlights mobile payment services such as Swish, noting that they rely on a different infrastructure from card payments and may still function even when cards do not.

People who mainly use mobile wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay are advised to keep physical cards and PINs readily available in case a phone runs out of battery or fails; the bank adds that a physical card’s chip may allow offline payments during interruptions.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!