Abolishing cash: a year without bank robberies in Denmark

Crime doesn’t pay – at least that applies to bank robberies in Denmark. In 2022, there was not a single bank robbery in the country. Because cash has become less important, many banks hardly have any reserves.

Denmark has gone a full year without a single bank robbery for the first time. While there were still 221 armed bank robberies in comparatively peaceful Denmark in 2000, there have always been fewer than ten since 2017 and finally not a single one in 2022, according to the banking association Finansforbundet.

This is apparently mainly due to the fact that the banks are gradually abolishing cash – it has been steadily losing importance in the Scandinavian country for years and hardly plays a role in everyday life. The Corona crisis accelerated this trend.

Hardly any cash reserves

As a result, the country’s banks have hardly any cash reserves in their branches. In March of last year, the central bank announced that in 2021 cash would only account for twelve percent of payment transactions, even in 2017 it was only 23 percent.

The banking union was pleased with the development because armed robberies are a “considerable burden for the employees involved”. Anyone who has not experienced something like this can hardly imagine the emotional consequences. Many of those affected have suffered from insomnia, anxiety or restlessness to this day.

Scandinavia and more precisely Sweden’s capital Stockholm is nevertheless the scene of one of the most famous bank robberies ever. In August 1973, after a failed bank robbery, a man took four employees of the institute hostage for several days. After the liberation, however, nobody wanted to testify against the perpetrator – the phenomenon is considered the birth of the term “Stockholm Syndrome”.