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I can’t find the article, but didn’t another Nordic country, where they’re going cashless already find a flaw? Their communication infrastructure had some sort

I can’t find the article, but didn’t another Nordic country, where they’re going cashless already find a flaw? Their communication infrastructure had some sort of disruption, I don’t think it was an attack, but a failure of something for like half a day. Because of that, merchant services were screwed. Few people could buy anything since few carried cash. Don’t get me wrong, I barely carry cash on me. I just have a bit in a safe. But I recognize the vulnerability. Natural disaster. Black out due to a node failure or two. An actual attack on the merchant services infrastructure or bank. Sure, cash can be stolen. But so can digital funds and you’re not limited to how much you can fit in a bag and carry. It’s also funny how folks complain about privacy and not wanting private entities to have their nose in their personal lives and track what they do. Especially those Vikings whine about that regularly. Yet they trust how much data with merchant service companies?

espadrine 8y ago
There is a practical benefit of locality in traditional distributed systems that may get lost with companies centralizing their operations for economies of scale. If your bank is local, as is your merchant's, you could design the payment network in such a way that, if your region is cut off from the rest of the Internet, local communication can still allow payment authorizations to go through.
isodude 8y ago
This has happened with Swish a couple of times. It's no different than a VISA or MasterCard debit though. It's a good case for e-krona which I'm looking forward too.
antt 8y ago
Back in the old country we had a dozen currencies, gold and jewels hidden in a fake brick for that exact reason. When you need to buy a train ticket to get away from the Germans or Russians you don't want to be asking "Sorry do you accept AmEx?".
- corodra 8y ago
  I grew up that if the Russians or Germans are coming, you’re going to use vodka as a currency.

espadrine 8y ago

There is a practical benefit of locality in traditional distributed systems that may get lost with companies centralizing their operations for economies of scale. If your bank is local, as is your merchant's, you could design the payment network in such a way that, if your region is cut off from the rest of the Internet, local communication can still allow payment authorizations to go through.

isodude 8y ago

This has happened with Swish a couple of times. It's no different than a VISA or MasterCard debit though. It's a good case for e-krona which I'm looking forward too.

antt 8y ago

Back in the old country we had a dozen currencies, gold and jewels hidden in a fake brick for that exact reason. When you need to buy a train ticket to get away from the Germans or Russians you don't want to be asking "Sorry do you accept AmEx?".

corodra 8y ago
I grew up that if the Russians or Germans are coming, you’re going to use vodka as a currency.