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

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.