Cash in the constitution: a Swiss decision on an international issue

Cash in hand: five-cent coins made by Swissmint, pictured in 2013. Rolf Neeser / Keystone

With people worldwide concerned about a possible decline of cash, Sunday’s vote could be seen as a signal, says an internationally renowned advocate. But conspiracy theories are never far away from cash, as an analysis with sociological perspectives explains.

With Sunday’s national vote, Switzerland has enshrined the preservation of cash in its federal constitution. The official information booklet for the vote, provided by the government, stated that this shift would have no impact on everyday life – nor involve any new tasks or costs.

However, on a symbolic level at least, many people seem to value the fact that cash is now explicitly anchored at constitutional level and not just in normal law – and this includes people outside Switzerland.

An important signal to the world

South African anthropologist and activist Brett Scott told Swissinfo before the vote that it would be an “important moment of signalling to the rest of the world” if Switzerland were to enshrine cash in its constitution. Banks have promoted digital payments for decades, Scott points out. In this context, he adds, it is important when a country takes a clear position that it wants to protect cash.

Scott, who advocates in his books for the preservation of physical money, lists many reasons why cash is important to people. “Some are specific to cash payments, others are more generally about digital society,” he says.

For example, Scott explains, elderly people and people with disabilities or visual impairments depend on cash, as do people with less money, since it’s easier to keep to a tight budget with cash. On top of this, “people with low incomes often don’t trust the banking sector; middle-class people, on the other hand, tend to trust in institutions,” he says. And in general, many people have a “nostalgic attachment” to cash.

Support from various backgrounds

At the societal level, cash supporters can have very different backgrounds. Scott mentions national security experts, for example, who worry about the “serious security threat” when people don’t have access to cash. Equally critical are “libertarian communities concerned about surveillance by digital systems”, people who are against Big Tech or the financial industry, or those who want to maintain an offline life.

But many also value cash for its “informal economy element”, says Scott. “Lots of people like to preserve an informal sphere for themselves – they don’t want institutions between themselves and their life.” Collection plates in church or poker games at home would be strange without cash, Scott adds. Who wants to use a Visa card in church?

It is not expected that the vote on Sunday will slow down the declining importance of notes and coins in everyday life in Switzerland.

Cash from a need for control

The importance of cash in many people’s lives also becomes clear when talking with Swiss sociologist Nadine Frei, who wrote a dissertation on the everyday understanding of money. “In interviews, I often encountered the notion that ‘only cash is real’ – cash is seen as real money in contrast to digital money, to which a certain artificiality is attached,” she says.

Frei thinks this is connected to a need for control. “Money is attributed a seductive power that needs to be resisted and controlled,” she says. “When it’s tangible, it’s viewed with a certain control.” People don’t want to get into debt or spend money on unnecessary things, and many imagine that they can control this better with cash, Frei explains.

“Digital money is associated both with a certain abstraction and an immediacy,” says Frei.

For her, criticism about how digital methods of payments can socially exclude certain groups is often legitimate – yet she also raises proximities to conspiratorial thinking.

Read about how Switzerland compares to its neighbours in Europe when it comes to dropping – or preserving – cash:

From pandemic to cash

Indeed, conspiracy theories often hover around cash. Scott, for instance, saw during the Covid-19 pandemic how his viewpoints ended up in an online video outlining a conspiracy theory about vaccinations and secret microchips.

Frei, who researched the circles of those opposed to health measures in Switzerland during the pandemic, says that “conspiracy narratives dock relatively well onto abstract and invisible processes – as well as onto the abstraction that the financial world involves”. For Frei, conspiracy thinking is characterised by an assumption that certain groups act in secret to steer the course of events. “This notion was evident not only in the coronavirus protests, but also in other areas,” Frei explains.

Criticism of the cash campaign’s connections

On Sunday, Swiss citizens voted on two separate questions about cash. The “Cash is freedom” initiative, a people’s initiative launched by citizens, did not convince a majority. A clear majority did however vote for a parliamentary counterproposal, which emphasised the mandate of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in ensuring cash supply.

The “Cash is freedom” initiative was launched by the same milieu as the “Stop compulsory vaccination” initiative, which was rejected by just under three-quarters of voters in 2024.

Before the cash vote, Swiss journalist Dennis Bühler researched in the Republik magazineExternal link how closely the group around the initiative were connected to various conspiracy narratives, including about the pandemic. In the same article, he argued that in terms of content it was “more or less irrelevant” whether people voted “yes” or “no”.

Asked further by Swissinfo, Bühler explains that he sees no signs “that Swiss politics and/or the SNB want to abolish cash or even to reduce its importance”. Bühler also doesn’t believe that anchoring cash in the constitution could help to “appease conspiracy-minded circles”.

No answers from the initiators

Swissinfo sent questions to the “Cash is freedom initiative” committee about their concerns and their view, which so far have remained unanswered.

Swissinfo also explicitly asked them for their response to the accusations by Bühler, who wrote in Republik that, among other things, it was “not the first initiative with which these circles sow doubt and discord”. The “Stop compulsory vaccination” initiative previously insinuated that “there is a plan to transplant microchips under people’s skin against their will”, he wrote.

In fact, the initiative argued at the timeExternal link that “neither politics, the pharmaceutical industry nor international organisations” should be allowed to decide “whether an implantable microchip, nanoparticles, genetic manipulation, a vaccination or something else enters our body”.

In a recent debate programme on Swiss public television, SRF, the cash initiative’s initiator, Richard Koller, was directly confronted with the Republik article. In response, Koller said that “we are very much for the people, very much for people”. In doing so, one can’t “look into people’s brains” and can’t know “what will come in the future”, he said. “A popular initiative takes five to six years”, and as an initiative committee, they have “no influence” over how people develop “during this time”.

Whether the criticism of the initiative’s milieu had an influence on why so many fewer people voted for the initial cash initiative than for the counterproposal is unclear.

Swiss voting culture

Around five years ago, Switzerland voted for the first time on part of the pandemic measures. It was almost the only country where voters could do so. In total, the Swiss voted on the Covid-19 law three times. Each time, over 60% voted in favour of the measures.

In general, says sociologist Oliver Nachtwey, who worked on the same studies on Covid protests as Frei, “Swiss democracy contributes to de-radicalisation”. By this he doesn’t mean individual votes, but rather the “basic Swiss understanding that one can launch initiatives and referendums and, if one loses, can make a fresh attempt again later.”

Whether cash in the constitution actually becomes an international signal remains to be seen.

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Edited by Balz Rigendinger; adapted from German by AI/dos