Niklas Arvidsson
Professor of industrial economics and managment with focus on industrial dynamics
Niklas Arvidsson studied for his MSc and PhD at the Stockholm School of Economics, becoming a doctor in 1999. He became a docent at KTH in 2011. Arvidsson researches and teaches at INDEK (ITM) in innovation processes and innovation management, focusing in part on banks and payment services.
His research into payment services began in 2008 when the use of cash peaked in Sweden, and has led to a large number of studies. The research focuses particularly on why businesses and people are transitioning from cash to digital, electronic payment services such as card, mobile payments, and in future possibly also digital cash issued by a central bank. It touches on questions like why a society stops using cash, how digital innovations emerge, what future payment systems could look like and how they might impact on society.
The studies have attracted extensive national and international attention, which has led to Arvidsson participating in a large number of academic and business-oriented conferences, TV and radio programmes, national inquiries, and interviews in different media. The acclaim is evident especially in the keen interest in Arvidsson’s book, Building a Cashless Society – the Swedish Route to the Future of Cash Payments, Springer Verlag, which has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.