Apart from simple payment systems, the global shift toward online transactions has many other beneficial outcomes. Denmark's banks saw an entire year without a single bank robbery due to a massive decline in cash stocks and transactions.
The news that 2022 had been robbery-free was greeted favourably by the union representing Danish bank staff on Tuesday.
The country's finance workers' union said that the country's increasingly cashless society had led banks to reduce their cash services, leaving little potential loot for robbers.
"It's nothing short of amazing. Because every time it happens, it's an extreme strain on the employees involved," said Steen Lund Olsen, the vice-president of the union, Finansforbundet.
"It's something you can't even begin to understand the emotional impact of if you haven't experienced it yourself," he added.
Since 2017, fewer than 10 bank robberies have been reported annually, down from 221 in 2000, according to the union.
According to Time magazine, the banking association noted that only 20 of around 800 national bank branches now have cash holdings, a figure that has consistently fallen over the years—from 219 in 1991 to 56 in 2021.
The news outlet further said that as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, which sparked the usage of cashless transactions, the central bank of Denmark revealed in March that cash use had decreased by almost half from 2017 to 2021.
Other countries are seeing a decrease in bank robberies as a result of a global trend toward online money transactions; American banks recorded 1,724 robberies in 2021, down from 7,556 in 2004.
