That actually happens with some frequency where I live, and they either use the old-school card imprint machines, or take down your number manually, or some ter

That actually happens with some frequency where I live, and they either use the old-school card imprint machines, or take down your number manually, or some terminals have an offline mode where it'll save the cards and then batch-run them later. It's also rare enough that it's not an issue at all in regular life. Edit: Just to clarify, obviously this can't be both common and rare... what I meant is that different neighborhoods will frequently go down, but there's usually some neighborhood within a 10-min drive that still has power, or some food truck has a cellular connection off their iPad PoS that still works, or you happen to have cash in your wallet or whatever or know the guy and they'll just put it on your tab for next time, whatever. I live in a semi-rural community in Oregon and we have a lot of small businesses, a lot of wildfires, and not a whole lot of infrastructure. We just kinda make do when things happen. A couple weeks ago, half the town lost power for the whole day, and the other half of the town just got some increased business and traffic. Life was back to normal the next day.