3 ms·

What does a cashless society do when the power/internet/etc. goes out (whether due to a natural disaster or otherwise)?

by mehrdadn 7y ago

username90 7y ago
Cash is not very useful if the power is out either, as for internet you just have to make it as reliable as power.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > Cash is not very useful if the power is out either Sorry, what? I literally bought my lunch with cash the other day when the restaurant I went to had lost its power. Where do you pull these assertions from?
- simplecto 7y ago
  Ask everyone living in South Florida post-hurricane. Cash is king.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
  You do realize that cash was in use before electricity as a utility was a thing, right? And that food is actually more critical for survival than electricity, right? And that you can exchange cash for food without electricity, right? And that blackouts is a thing that actually happens, right?
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    Be nice to the Eloi.
ACS_Solver 7y ago
It's not that fragile, although it should of course be improved further. Payment terminals don't depend on constant connectivity, they can store transactions and send them to the bank later. Some of them, especially the ones used by smaller merchants, are battery-powered. If card terminals are unavailable completely, mobile payments should still work. So in my experience, the cashless society here can deal with such intermittent technical problems just fine. A lunch restaurant near my office had a total outage once, couldn't take any payments. Things worked out just fine on an honor system then - they wrote down names and amounts on paper, and asked people to pay in the next days. What doesn't work currently is resilience against long-lasting technical problems. If there's no power in an area for several days, there's no sensible way for the current cashless technologies to work.

3 ms·

What does a cashless society do when the power/internet/etc. goes out (whether due to a natural disaster or otherwise)?

by mehrdadn 7y ago

What does a cashless society do when the power/internet/etc. goes out (whether due to a natural disaster or otherwise)?

username90 7y ago
Cash is not very useful if the power is out either, as for internet you just have to make it as reliable as power.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > Cash is not very useful if the power is out either Sorry, what? I literally bought my lunch with cash the other day when the restaurant I went to had lost its power. Where do you pull these assertions from?
- simplecto 7y ago
  Ask everyone living in South Florida post-hurricane. Cash is king.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
  You do realize that cash was in use before electricity as a utility was a thing, right? And that food is actually more critical for survival than electricity, right? And that you can exchange cash for food without electricity, right? And that blackouts is a thing that actually happens, right?
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    Be nice to the Eloi.
ACS_Solver 7y ago
It's not that fragile, although it should of course be improved further. Payment terminals don't depend on constant connectivity, they can store transactions and send them to the bank later. Some of them, especially the ones used by smaller merchants, are battery-powered. If card terminals are unavailable completely, mobile payments should still work. So in my experience, the cashless society here can deal with such intermittent technical problems just fine. A lunch restaurant near my office had a total outage once, couldn't take any payments. Things worked out just fine on an honor system then - they wrote down names and amounts on paper, and asked people to pay in the next days. What doesn't work currently is resilience against long-lasting technical problems. If there's no power in an area for several days, there's no sensible way for the current cashless technologies to work.