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Such robustness is currently a subject of government studies and planning. It's definitely an area of concern. A personal-level outage is a problem but less so

Such robustness is currently a subject of government studies and planning. It's definitely an area of concern. A personal-level outage is a problem but less so than with cash. I have three separate items on me I can use to pay - my card holder with bank cards, my phone and my watch. That's more redundancy than with cash, which is one item (wallet). Power or network outages aren't a big issue. I've experienced those and it's smooth. Most payment machines work fine without power (batteries) or without network because they then store the transactions locally and send them later. I've even had lunch when the lunch restaurant was having IT problems and couldn't accept any payments - they noted how many people came on paper and I came back the next day to pay, as I'm sure the vast majority of patrons did. Bank or card issuer outages are handled by using another card or payment method. If some bank's cards aren't working (uncommon but it happens), mobile payments generally work still, and most people have more than one card. Major national level outages are a concern. It would be impossible to buy e.g. a train ticket as those require immediate payment, so if somehow Internet was down nationwide, you couldn't get a train ticket online or at the ticket machines. This is one major goal that the e-krona (state-issued digital currency) project is meant to address as e-krona is intended to also work offline.

madsbuch 3y ago
For you last point regarding national level outages: I am quite sure that trains companies would instantiate emergency systems in that case – maybe just by letting people travel for free. Such an event is also not expected to last for long.
- ACS_Solver 3y ago
  Quite possibly, yes. There's also the consideration that such an outage would likely be part of an even bigger problem. Over here, like most of Europe, we're pretty safe from natural disasters aside from storms causing local power outages. There are no earthquakes, tsunamis or similarly destructive events. So a hypothetical situation where payments are down nationwide for a significant period of time would almost certainly be part of an even larger disaster where a lot of infrastructure is non-functional due to military attack or something akin to a complete crash of all computers.
- el-salvador 3y ago
  Not a natural disaster, but there's something similar happening for about 10 days in Central America. The largest Telco was hit by ransomware and this has affected most of their systems. They are unable to receive electronic and card payments, or sell digital packages, it seems their billing, CRM and Helpdesk systems are down. So all prepaid users are able to use the inrernet and call for free.
boricj 3y ago
> I have three separate items on me I can use to pay - my card holder with bank cards, my phone and my watch. That's more redundancy than with cash, which is one item (wallet). All of which are electronic and depend on centralized services. Bank notes and coins work offline and without electricity. Not too long ago, a restaurant I went to with a coworker had an Internet outage and no card or mobile payment would go through. I paid for the whole bill since I was the only one carrying cash, then we went to the nearest ATM to reimburse me. I always carry cash. I don't use it often but it always works, even if everything else fails.
- ACS_Solver 3y ago
  The hardware/software infrastructure for cards and mobile payments is separate. We get card outages or Swish (mobile) outages occasionally, I don't remember any that affected both. Card payments are expected to work offline. We're so dependent on IT systems that even cash doesn't always work. One of the most significant outages we've ever experienced was when Coop, a grocery store chain, had to close all its stores for a couple days because of an IT outage. It didn't help that the stores accept cash - the payments still couldn't be registered, receipts couldn't be printed, so the stores were completely unable to function. We clearly need a robust fallback solution. Some kind of payment system that can work despite centralized outages (a bank's systems failing) or local outages at the merchant. But that shouldn't be cash. The practice of exchanging fragile, filthy pieces of paper whose ownership you cannot prove once outside your possession belongs to the past, we can do much better now.

madsbuch 3y ago

For you last point regarding national level outages: I am quite sure that trains companies would instantiate emergency systems in that case – maybe just by letting people travel for free. Such an event is also not expected to last for long.

ACS_Solver 3y ago
Quite possibly, yes. There's also the consideration that such an outage would likely be part of an even bigger problem. Over here, like most of Europe, we're pretty safe from natural disasters aside from storms causing local power outages. There are no earthquakes, tsunamis or similarly destructive events. So a hypothetical situation where payments are down nationwide for a significant period of time would almost certainly be part of an even larger disaster where a lot of infrastructure is non-functional due to military attack or something akin to a complete crash of all computers.
el-salvador 3y ago
Not a natural disaster, but there's something similar happening for about 10 days in Central America. The largest Telco was hit by ransomware and this has affected most of their systems. They are unable to receive electronic and card payments, or sell digital packages, it seems their billing, CRM and Helpdesk systems are down. So all prepaid users are able to use the inrernet and call for free.

boricj 3y ago

> I have three separate items on me I can use to pay - my card holder with bank cards, my phone and my watch. That's more redundancy than with cash, which is one item (wallet). All of which are electronic and depend on centralized services. Bank notes and coins work offline and without electricity. Not too long ago, a restaurant I went to with a coworker had an Internet outage and no card or mobile payment would go through. I paid for the whole bill since I was the only one carrying cash, then we went to the nearest ATM to reimburse me. I always carry cash. I don't use it often but it always works, even if everything else fails.

ACS_Solver 3y ago
The hardware/software infrastructure for cards and mobile payments is separate. We get card outages or Swish (mobile) outages occasionally, I don't remember any that affected both. Card payments are expected to work offline. We're so dependent on IT systems that even cash doesn't always work. One of the most significant outages we've ever experienced was when Coop, a grocery store chain, had to close all its stores for a couple days because of an IT outage. It didn't help that the stores accept cash - the payments still couldn't be registered, receipts couldn't be printed, so the stores were completely unable to function. We clearly need a robust fallback solution. Some kind of payment system that can work despite centralized outages (a bank's systems failing) or local outages at the merchant. But that shouldn't be cash. The practice of exchanging fragile, filthy pieces of paper whose ownership you cannot prove once outside your possession belongs to the past, we can do much better now.