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I was in Copenhagen last month for vacation. On a Saturday night, perfect weather and everyone in the city out looking for a good time - the banking system was

I was in Copenhagen last month for vacation. On a Saturday night, perfect weather and everyone in the city out looking for a good time - the banking system was down. No joke, zero ATMs worked, zero CC machines worked, the entire country's electronic monetary system was completely shut down. Nobody in the country could do anything until they brought it back up 4 hours later. Apparently this happened several times this year (including Valentines day, one of the biggest economic weekends of the year) with little press and no responsible party blamed. Being a software dev, first I was lamenting the irony of a "secure" central banking system, then my mind went straight to how screwed I'd be if I wrote the code that brought that down. Now I have a little more perspective and don't feel any better.

jafingi 11y ago
That's Nets, which controls the credit card payments in Denmark. However, it's at best a non-issue, because CC terminals can be put in "offline mode". So you can still pay, but the transactions will first be synchronized when the line is back up. So until that, they're stored on the CC terminal itself. HOWEVER when running in offline mode, the shops will pay a larger transaction fee. Also there are some risks, e.g. the transactions are lost if something happens to the CC terminal, and furthermore, the shop cannot verify the card (which is automatically done when it's online). So unfortunately, many shops don't want to enable it.. However, the problem relies in Nets itself. They control the credit card systems in Denmark, have monopoly on "Dankort" which is the danish equivalent to Visa (actually you normally get a Visa/Dankort hybrid so that when you're abroad, you use the Visa-part of the card). Nets also controls NemID, which is the Danish authentication method for public stuff (one-time passwords). They have been criticized, but IT in Denmark is run by morons (sorry..).

jafingi 11y ago

That's Nets, which controls the credit card payments in Denmark. However, it's at best a non-issue, because CC terminals can be put in "offline mode". So you can still pay, but the transactions will first be synchronized when the line is back up. So until that, they're stored on the CC terminal itself. HOWEVER when running in offline mode, the shops will pay a larger transaction fee. Also there are some risks, e.g. the transactions are lost if something happens to the CC terminal, and furthermore, the shop cannot verify the card (which is automatically done when it's online). So unfortunately, many shops don't want to enable it.. However, the problem relies in Nets itself. They control the credit card systems in Denmark, have monopoly on "Dankort" which is the danish equivalent to Visa (actually you normally get a Visa/Dankort hybrid so that when you're abroad, you use the Visa-part of the card). Nets also controls NemID, which is the Danish authentication method for public stuff (one-time passwords). They have been criticized, but IT in Denmark is run by morons (sorry..).