Over six billion payments are made in Sweden each year. A majority of payments are made by card, while remaining payments are largely credit transfers such as direct debits and Swish. Examples of payment methods include cash, card payments, digital wallets and crypto-assets. They all have different environmental footprints. Cash payments require banknotes and coins, which require physical resources such as paper and metal. Digital payments often require energy-intensive servers and data centres to process transactions. How these data centres are operated affects the overall climate impact of the payment method. It is affected, for example, by whether renewable energy or fossil fuels are used. Examples of emerging technologies include block-chains and central bank digital currencies. Crypto-assets, such as Bitcoin, have been around for many years and have become increasingly popular for speculative investments. They can also be used as a means of payment, but this is rare.^[47] See “Almost no one pays with cryptocurrencies” in Payments Report, December 2022, Sveriges Riksbank. Crypto-assets are very energy-intensive due to the method used to create the asset. With the emergence of new technologies, it is important to understand their long-term environmental impacts. Some new technologies have the potential to reduce overall resource use, while others may contribute to additional energy consumption and emissions.^[48] See H. Eklööf (2022), "An overview of fintech and cryptoassets", Staff memo, May, Sveriges Riksbank and the Swedish Energy Agency (2023) “Energianvändning för utvinning av kryptovaluta” [Energy use for cryptocurrency mining], report in Swedish, January.