Where have Denmark’s bank robbers gone?

Asked why he robbed banks for a living, the legendary American bank robber Willie Sutton allegedly replied, ‘because that’s where the money is’. Not any more, it isn’t. 

In Denmark, where only twenty of the country’s 740 bank branches still hold cash in their vaults, 2022 was the first year without a bank robbery. There had been 222 as recently as 2002. Sutton, who said he robbed banks because ‘I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life’, would weep.

Why have Danish bank robbers hung up their swag bags? The reason is Denmark’s rapid transition towards a cashless society, expedited by the pandemic. In the four years to 2021, the proportion of cash used for purchases nearly halved, from 23 percent to 12 percent. Only Sweden and Norway use less cash than Denmark. 

My fellow Danes’ abandonment of cash is passing me by, though – I still need scads of the stuff.