cash

Sweden was on the verge of eliminating banknotes as a payment system. Now it asks its citizens to save cash just in case

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Few countries in the world have turned their backs on cash with so much conviction as Sweden did in its day. For years it was the great global laboratory of digital money and a place where, paying in cash, It was almost a strange gesture. In the Nordic country, it is common to find businesses where “card only” signs are read without anyone protesting. Its financial system seemed to have resolved the future of payments once and for all. Now, that same country has just taken a turn that no one expected: recommending that its citizens save a certain amount of cash in case all their digital payments system collapses. From inventing banknotes to almost eliminating them. Sweden has a unique history with paper money. In 1661 it was the first country in Europe in introducing billsand it was also where the Riksbank, the central bank, was born oldest in the world. That pioneering vocation led her, centuries later, to lead the race towards a completely cashless economy. The numbers reflected it clearly: if in 2010 39% of Swedes said they had paid their last purchase in cash, in 2020 that percentage had fallen up to 9%. According to the Riksbank itself, currently only one in ten Purchases in Swedish stores are made with physical money. Anders Ohlsson, CEO of Deutsche Bank Corporate Bank, summed it up like this: “I don’t think right now people in Sweden know what the different currencies are like.” A central bank that asks you to keep banknotes at home. The Riksbank published some recommendations which were surprising coming from one of the most digitalized financial systems on the planet. The Swedish central bank asked all households in the country to keep at least 1,000 Swedish crowns in cash for each adult (just over 90 euros at the exchange rate), as a cash reserve for possible emergencies. “This amount should be considered as a reference and is intended to cover one week of essential purchases. Households may need more or less cash on hand, depending on the number of people in the household or their specific needs. Whenever possible, households are recommended to keep cash in various denominations,” the Swedish banking entity says in its statement. Too digital to be invulnerable. The underlying reason for making this peculiar call is not nostalgic but strategic. An economy that depends almost entirely on digital payments is also an economy exposed to power outages, cyberattacks or geopolitical tensions. The Visa and Mastercard networks, on which a large part of the Swedish payment system is based, are of American origin, which adds an extra layer of vulnerability in an increasingly uncertain international context. The Riksbank itself puts it bluntly in its statement: “Access to different payment methods improves people’s ability to make payments in the event of temporary disruptions, crises and, in the worst case, war.” It is not an unfounded threat. In recent months, several European countries have reviewed the resilience of your critical infrastructures before him security deterioration and the increase in uncertainty on the continent. Diversify so as not to depend on a single system. Beyond cash, the Riksbank’s warning to citizens is committed to a more diversified payment strategy. He recommends having access to at least two cards from different networks (a Visa and a Mastercard, for example) so that, if the systems of one of them fail, payments can be made with the other. It also advises having access to mobile payment services like swishthe popular Swedish application that operates on a different infrastructure than traditional bank cards. For whom use Apple Pay either Google Paythe Swedish central bank reminds that it is advisable to always have the physical card on hand and know the PIN, since the physical chip allows payments to be made even without an internet connection. All of this advice will be developed in more detail in the Riksbank’s 2026 Payments Report, due on March 12. Sweden, which for years led the way to paperless money, is now a reminder that no system is foolproof. In Xataka | If we want to know what the end of cash will be like, we only have to look at a country that is experiencing it: China Image | Unsplash (Tobias Flyckt, Emil Kalibradov)

Donating cash to children is exempt from personal income tax for parents. It is not free for children

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Young people do not have it easy to get ahead in a context of very tight salaries and with him housing prices skyrocketed. Therefore, helping children or a family member financially becomes the natural impulse. However, this willingness to help may have tax consequences What is important to know before making the transfer. In a binding query Addressed to the General Directorate of Taxes (DGT), a body dependent on the Treasury, a person raised the possibility of helping his family financially through a cash donation. The consultation made it abundantly clear: anyone who donates cash has nothing to fear on their tax return. The same cannot be said about the person who receives it. ​What the Treasury says about the donor’s personal income tax. The General Directorate of Taxes responded to a person who wanted to donate cash to his mother. The DGT pulled the file and argued its response in a previous binding consultation, in which a father raised the tax consequences of donating cash to his children. The Treasury’s response establishes that “for the donation of money, no capital gain or loss will be computed for the donor,” which implies that on the part of the person who gives that money there is nothing to declare or pay in the Income Tax. The technical reasoning is quite logical and simple. When money is donated, there is no difference between the value at which it was acquired and the value at which it is transmitted, so there is no alteration in the donor’s assets that justifies paying taxes on it, as established in article 33.1 of the Law on Personal Income Tax. When the gift is not money, the story changes. The organization itself takes advantage of the consultation to remember that the exemption from personal income tax taxation Applies exclusively to cash donations. That means that if parents They donate a home to their children that they bought 20 years ago for 100,000 euros, and that at the time of donation its value is 200,000 euros, must pay personal income tax for that increase of 100,000 euros in its value between the date of purchase and the donation. The same occurs with shares or other assets with market value that may increase in value between the purchase price and the donation price. The most curious thing is that this principle does not apply in the same way if that same property had lost value since its purchase, the donor would not be able to deduct that loss. Children do pay the Gift Tax. It should be noted that the fact that the father does not pay personal income tax for that donation does not mean that the transfer of assets has no consequences for the person who receives it. The child who receives the money is obliged to declare the donation and settle the Inheritance and Donation Tax. This tax falls on the person who receives the donation, not on the donor. The amount to be paid for the child or family member depends on factors such as the amount received, the degree of relationship and, above all, the autonomous community where the recipient resides for tax purposes. Depending on what requirements are met, the amount to pay may be close to zero euros, but it is necessary to complete the procedure. If the donation is not declared within the established period, the Treasury may impose penalties and interest. A tax that depends on the communities. The Inheritance and Donation Tax is partially transferred to the autonomous communities, which means that each community sets its own bonuses, reductions and tax rates. This generates very notable differences between paying this tax in one community or another. Madrid and Andalusia, for example, apply a 99% bonus on donations between parents and children, which in practice means that the recipient barely pays taxes when making this type of donation. At the opposite extreme, communities such as Catalonia or the Valencian Community have more demanding tax systems, with progressive rates and fewer bonuses. A particularly striking case is that of Extremadura, which has extended the exemption up to 200,000 euros in donations for children to buy their first home. In Xataka | The Great Wealth Transfer: the movement from boomers to millennials that will transfer millions between generations Image | Pexels (Kaboompics.com)

Santander and BBVA co-finance Netflix’s cash offer with 3.8 billion

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Santander and BBVA have doubled their financing to Netflix to $3.8 billion to support the acquisition of Warner Bros. for $27.75 per share in cash. The Spanish bank is thus positioned as a key actor in the most significant consolidation operation for the global audiovisual sector, in the midst of a battle to reconfigure the streaming market. How it works. The financial structure rests on a trio of international banks. Wells Fargo leads the credit union with the highest documented individual commitment for an investment grade acquisition, accompanied by the French BNP Paribas and the British HSBC. Between the three of them they have extended the initial bridge loan up to 42.2 billion dollars. What do the Spanish do? In this context, Santander commits to 2,672 million dollars divided into two blocks: 1,360 million in the bridge loan and 1,312 million in the long-term financing agreed in December. BBVA, for its part, offers 1,088 million: 510 million in the transitional loan and 578 million in the permanent lines. Other entities. Along with the Spanish entities, there are the French Société Générale, the German Commerzbank, the Canadians RBC, Banco de Montreal and Scotiabank, the Japanese Mizuho and MUFG, as well as Morgan Stanley, PNC Bank and Standard Chartered. The union brings together fifteen institutions that share the risk of an operation without comparable precedents in the recent history of the audiovisual industry. The Spanish participation, although secondary compared to Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas and HSBC, consolidates the presence of both entities in the corporate financing segment in the US. Seeking internationalization. The presence of Santander and BBVA in financing Netflix illustrates the internationalization strategy of both entities in large-scale operations linked to technology and media. For example, Santander announced in December 2025 a strategic alliance with MoffettNathanson to strengthen its sector analysis in technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) in the United States. and BBVA closed 2024 with record revenue of 3,194 million euros in the first half of 2025, driven by investment banking and corporate financing operations. All in cash. On January 20, Netflix modified the initial structure of its offer for the purchase, which combined money and shares of the platform. Now, Netflix values ​​the operation at 83,000 million dollars through an all-cash offer of $27.75 per share. Paramount, meanwhile, maintains a hostile offer of 108 billion dollars at $30 per share. Netflix wants exclusively the movie studios and HBO Max, excluding the cable TV business. This division will create an independent company, Discovery Global, which will be listed on the stock exchange and whose shares will be delivered to current Warner shareholders. When will we know something? Warner’s board of directors has rejected Paramount’s proposal eight times, calling it “insufficient value”. Netflix’s offer, on the other hand, has the unanimous support of Warner management. Shareholders must vote by April 2026, according to the accelerated schedule following the conversion of Netflix’s proposal to cash. In Xataka | All the unanswered questions left by Netflix’s purchase of Warner: a huge mess

If we want to know what the end of cash will be like, we just have to look at a country that is living it: China

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If you go to China and enter a trade, the most normal thing is that you cannot pay with cash. The blue and green logos of Alipay (Ant Group) and Wechat Pay (Tencent) dominate everything, and have been relegating to traditional coins and bills to an absolute background. While in the West we discuss what to do With cash And Europe considers What will happen to the digital euroIn China they are clear. Cash, nothing. Supermarkets, coffees, taxis, or public transport are some of the many types of scenarios in which The Chinese already pay with Alipay or Wechat Pay. At any point where it is necessary to pay the blue and green logos of these applications, everything dominate, and in fact many businesses do not even have a cash register. According to Le Mondemany taxis and local businesses refuse to accept cash payments, and if they accept them, they do not even have change for buyers. Source: Wikimedia Only the elderly pay with tickets. Ma Dian, a Hubei fruits and vegetable seller, commented in this newspaper how the disappearance of cash payments has lived. “I only accept effective to help the elderly. Below the 80s, practically everyone has made the change. Above, it is much more difficult to adapt.” The elderly are here the greats harmed, and they must ask their relatives for help from the difficulty that they propose to make mobile payments with Alipay or Wechat Pay. QR codes everywhere. The QR codes that we usually see in restaurants in Spain to consult the letter dominate everything in China. There the shops have static or dynamic codes (on screens such as TPV) that customers scan. If we are facing a static code, the client usually has to introduce the amount to be paid. In dynamic codes, the amount is automatically shown. The last step is to authenticate with a password, facial recognition or a fingerprint. Although initially Alipay and Wechat Pay used different codes, in some cases unified QR codes are already used for both apps and it is the client who chooses with which app works on his mobile. Banks lose relevance. The absolute presence of these two digital payment systems have caused Chinese banks – government supplies – also have a secondary role for many clients. It is necessary to have a bank account to have it linked to these applications, but its mobile applications and services are totally overshadowed by Alipay and Wechat Pay, with which users do it practically everything in the field of payments and economic transactions. As John Engen said In American Bankerbanks are often reduced to “passive actors.” Powerful, but at bay. Although both Alibaba and Tencent have managed to monopolize these transactions, the Chinese government It has already demonstrated that remain entities that can be punished in a wrecking way. It happened in 2020 when Ant Group He was about From going to heel. Jack Ma criticized his government at that time, which caused The cancellation of that IPO and An exile of years for one of the great figures of entrepreneurship in China. China wants its digital renminbi. The Chinese Central Bank has been looking for a digital currency for years. Your digital renminbi or Yuan Digital You are also getting more than being an alternative to the dollar: is creating a parallel system. The objective is to have an alternative to the popularity of cryptocurrencies, but a controlled by the Chinese authorities. Although the deployment of this digital currency has been in progress for years, its prominence is very limited, and Momne both Alipay and Wechat Pay continue to dominate everything. And tourists, what. Both platforms, which before They made it difficult To tourists, they have progressively adapted to their needs. For approximately two years both Alipay and Wechat Pay allow foreign visitors to create an account in these applications and associate it with a credit card. Last year too They increased The transaction limits, which in Alipay went from $ 1,000 to 5,000, for example. Better with Chinese mobile number. In Wechat Pay it is even possible to access a kind of purse that they can fill in so as not to associate your Credit card to the app, and thus make small payments. It is necessary to have Internet access for these payments, and hire a SIM or a local ESIM to get a Chinese number – for example, for Validations with SMS – is especially recommended to facilitate this type of transactions. Image | Sergio Kian In Xataka | China has made a drastic decision and unpredictable consequences: prioritizing “its” technology, even worse

While the use of cash is reduced, there are more tickets than ever

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The term in economics “Net negative emission”It occurs when a central bank includes more tickets than it puts into circulation through the banking system. That is, if commercial banks return to the Central Bank more money in cash than request, the net balance between distributed and retired bills is negative. It happens that it is something exceptional in developed economies, and in Spain the phenomenon does not stop multiplying. Sustained anomaly. I told it in A report the newspaper.es. Apparently, since 2007, and with the Exception of the pandemic year 2020, Spain has continued a negative net issue of bills. As we said, the phenomenon, practically unpublished in the whole of the eurosystem, implies that the Bank of Spain collects more effective than it distributes, something that no other central bank of the euro zone experiences with the same magnitude or persistence. Not just that. The situation has reached extraordinary levels in 2023 and 2024, when the differences amounted to 13.4 billion and 12.2 billion of euros respectively. In total, the accumulated balance of retired bills without counterpart in new broadcasts has reached 26.5 billion at the end of 2024. Although the Bank of Spain attributes This imbalance to the tourist boom (especially to German origin), the available data They invite you to think about more complex causes, since no other country with high levels of tourism shows a similar dynamic. Neither Greece, nor France, nor Italy records a massive return of physical tickets with those characteristics. The suspicious weight. He counted the medium That one the most striking aspects of the phenomenon is the nature of the re -turned tickets. More than half (53.5%) of the physical tickets recovered in Spain during 2024 corresponded to Values ​​of 100, 200 or 500 euros. This proportion contrasts and much with what happens in other surrounding countries: in France, high denomination tickets represent 25.4% of the total returned, and in Italy just 9.7%. Plus: differences cannot be attributed exclusively to tourist profile, since 64% of returns occur outside the central quarter of tourism (July, August and September), which further weakens the seasonal hypothesis. Thus, the constant presence of large value tickets suggests, therefore, a sustained refloration of black money, particularly the one from past times, such as … the real estate bubble prior to the 2008 crisis. Brick echoes. The explanation is given because in the years of the real estate sector, especially between 2002 and 2007, Spain came to concentrate the 30% of all 500 euros tickets issued by the ECB, a disproportionate proportion with respect to the size of its economy. In July 2007, the accumulated total of these tickets in circulation within the country reached The 56,956 million eurosfigure that coincides with the apogee of the real estate speculation cycle. Although the issuance of 500 bills ceased in 2019, they are still a legal tender and, according to Data from the Bank of Spain itself3,157 million were still in circulation in March 2025. Only in 2024 they withdrew from the system More than 1,150 million In this denomination, a notable figure that points to an still active outcrop process. The progressive withdrawal of these tickets cannot be explained solely by ordinary tourist or financial transactions, rather, it would fit with a gradual regularization of cumulative effective cash for decades. The track: the real estate market. The connection between the massive return of cash and the behavior of the current real estate market adds, if possible, another layer of complexity to the analysis. In his 2024 annual reportthe Bank of Spain itself warns that one of the factors that is making access to housing more expensive is the growth of demand by non -residentswhich already represent 8.4% of all purchases. Specific areas. The pressure is especially intense in tourist regions such as the islands or the Mediterranean coast, where foreign investment is oriented to holiday use and rental profitability. As The newspaper explainedalthough the report does not directly link these flows with the phenomenon of the negative net emission, it does suggest an economic frame in which the large amounts of cash, again, probably opaque, they find exit In real estate investment. Thus, the hypothesis of which part of the returned tickets comes from irregular or not declared operations, linked to the sale of properties or tourist rental, becomes strength in the absence of an official alternative explanation sufficiently consistent. Image | Bank of Spain In Xataka | Spanish banks have been able to choose when to pay their “imposite.” And that has allowed them to declare record benefits In Xataka | The Bank of Spain has taken a look at the rent in Spain and has concluded something: the problem is not the funds

The world seemed not to be prepared for the end of cash. The digital euro makes it clear that yes

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The unknown about Why datáphones worked in full blackout He brought another question: if the end of effective money made sense or not. Without operating offline TPVs, the cash It was the only form of payment. But not having a connection and having an alternative payment method does not evide on digital alternatives. This is something that Europe was raised with the digital euro more than two years ago The digital euro. After years of study, the European Commission approved in 2023 the First legal framework For him Digital euro. As its name indicates, this will be the digital version of our currency. It is born as an alternative and not as a replacement, at least with the information currently available. The ECB has everything thought. The European Central Bank detailed in that first framework that the digital euro would operate offline to guarantee privacy. The technical details have not yet transcended, since this is a development currency, but the transactions without connection will be one of its bases. Both cards and smartphones will temporarily store the funds, synchronizing with the central system when recovering the connection. A blackout that has not demonstrated so much. Although the blackout left on the table that without TPV there is no way to pay that is not cash, it has failed to show the need for physical money to respond to the need for payment. If the digital euro manages to operate offline, it will be possible to make transactions even in scenarios such as the one lived this week. The methodology. Without too much technical depth, the ECB advanced that short -range technologies (Bluetooth, NFC, etc.) are used to make connections between devices, imposing certain limits for transactions in order to mitigate fraud risks. “The Eurosystem has no interest in collecting data from individual user payments, or in monitoring payment behavior or sharing of those data with government agencies or other public institutions.” While the ECB stated that privacy will be one of the pillars of the digital euro, with a certain degree of anonymization (intermediaries will not be able to access concrete details about transactions), Spain, a ticket country. In countries like GermanySurveys collect that half of the population is not willing to use the digital euro. If we focus on Spain, a study by the IPSOS agency evidenced that 65% of respondents were comfortable with current payment methods and would not use this alternative. Payments are still linked to the private, especially in Spain. According to data from the Bank of Spain 65% of the population used cash in 2023, being the main payment method for purchase in physical stores. Europe wants to have the digital euro ready in the short term (two years ago there was already talk of 2025 and 2026). You won’t have it easy. Image | Greegrose and Moerschy In Xataka | The European Central Bank has been fighting for five years to literally create a “European Bizum”. Now has taken a key step

I have tried Silbo Money, mobile payments without leaving WhatsApp. It’s like bringing cash to the mobile, for good and for the bad

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A few weeks ago we talked about Money whistlethe Sevillian startup that integrates mobile payments in WhatsApp. Its approach is brilliant in its simplicity: instead of competing as another app, it is integrated into “the application we already use” par excellence to become our digital portfolio. The system operates inside WhatsAppwith minimal derivations to the browser. We add to our contacts and chat with a purely functional Bot. No canned responses or frustrating loops, only direct and functional interactions. The record is automatic and direct: we validate identity, we create a four -digit pin, and voila. This pin is requested when initiating a conversation or after a while of inactivity, balancing security and convenience. The registration process. The creation of the PIN is one of the processes for which Silbo sends us to the browser. Its main difference with Bizum It is structural: It works as an independent digital purse. While Bizum operates directly with our bank account, Silbo requires loading previous balance. It is moving the cash to the mobile. The loading process. This separation has two readings: An inconvenience: Add friction against Bizum. An advantage: Provides extra security when isolation from our account. The interface is pure pragmatism. It allows navigation for text commands and contextual buttons. The buttons guide the rookie, the commands speed up the expert. For example, if we write “balance” you will ask us if you show it in the chat or if you download it. If we write “Chat balance” you will show us directly. The Silbo Shares menu. A shipment of money … … and a money application (happily corresponded). By the way, the fluorine yellow that uses whistle as a brand image seemed to me somewhat strident at the beginning. After trying it, it is clear to me: it makes it easier to quickly locate the conversation with a Scroll visual. It stands out, and a lot. The most remarkable is how to take advantage of WhatsApp omnipresence. You don’t have to download another app or learn to use another interface, everything happens in a family environment. It even has a collection of Stickers Own that include messages such as “who pays rest”, perfect for using passive-agreesive tone. The withdrawal of the balance to our bank account. His challenge will be to achieve critical mass. Like whatsapp or bizum, You need adoption to be useful. Its advantage is to operate on WhatsApp, canonical in Spain. His challenge, convince users to take the step, especially considering Bizum’s current domain. In my tests I have done several operations: load balance, send money, claim it, receive it, withdraw it, consultations, etc. Everything works fluently, without complications or delays (the withdrawals take one or two days). The only real friction is the need to load previously balance. Overcome that step, the system is as natural as sending a message. Silbo optimizes more than revolutionary: take the mobile payment and simplify it by integrating it where we already live. It is pure pragmatism. Time will say if it manages to challenge Bizum. In Xataka | The unstoppable rise of Travelperk: the Spanish travel startup already is worth 2.7 billion dollars and strengthens its expansion Outstanding image | Xataka with Mockuuuups Studio

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