Mastodawn

Harry Sintonen 23h ago

Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Estonia are soon enabling offline debit card payments for at least seven days without network connectivity. The change covers payments for essential goods in physical trade, such as food, medicine, and fuel. Each country has made - or is in the process of making - the required changes to their related regulations to enable it.

The motivation for this change is to enable payments even in exceptional situations such as network disruptions due to sabotage or conflict. TL;DR: You can pay for essentials even if Russia cuts the cables.

Plans for this change were announced in May 2025: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/nordics-estonia-plan-offline-card-payment-back-up-if-internet-cut-2025-05-07/

#resilience #preparedness #infrastructure #payments #banking

Leif Samuelsson

It will still be difficult to use payment systems from the US if they decide to put an embargo on us, like they threatened to do with Spain. We need EU based cards!

Harry Sintonen 22h ago

@leffe Agreed. Currently only 37% of payments use national systems (and it's unclear how much dependencies on US systems those might have). https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr250228_1~7f0697af45.en.html

Most EU countries rely on international card schemes for card payments, ECB report shows

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the European Union countries which have adopted the euro. Our main task is to maintain price stability in the euro area and so preserve the purchasing power of the single currency.

European Central Bank

Leif Samuelsson 22h ago

We have a national payment system in Sweden called Swish, but it requires the use of an operating system from Apple or Google, and it doesn't allow accessibility software to be present. So in either case, we are quite vulnerable.

#svpol #eupol #Swish #BankID #a11y

Kalle Kniivilä 22h ago

@leffe @harrysintonen Swish works fine on /e/OS. But it does require BankID. Which also works fine on /e/OS, at the moment at least.

Leif Samuelsson 21h ago

@kallekn @harrysintonen

Android apps that don't require logging in to Google for "security" reasons may soon be a thing of the past. I had /e/OS for a couple of years, but there were other necessary apps that wouldn't run, because they hadn't been installed by Google. It's a house of cards.

Kalle Kniivilä 21h ago

@leffe @harrysintonen That's what I am afraid of when it comes to BankID for example. If it stops working, /e/OS is toast.

Leif Samuelsson 21h ago

@kallekn @harrysintonen

Oh, and even #MicroG as an alternative to Play Services still depends on Google infrastructure.

Utarg of Utarg 🔬🇪🇺🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇦21h ago

@kallekn @leffe @harrysintonen I’ve just bought a SailfishOS phone and hope I can get BankID working on it, presumably by sideloading the Android version.

Kalle Kniivilä 21h ago

@toxy @leffe @harrysintonen Please do tell if that works.

Utarg of Utarg 🔬🇪🇺🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇦21h ago

@kallekn @leffe @harrysintonen Absolutely.

Leif Samuelsson 21h ago

@toxy @kallekn @harrysintonen

I had Sailfish too for a couple of years. Same problems.

Kalle Kniivilä 21h ago

@leffe @toxy @harrysintonen But did BankID work? What did not work?

Leif Samuelsson 21h ago

@kallekn @toxy @harrysintonen

Yes, but it was eight years ago. It doesn't have any advantage over other degoogled systems. We'll see what happens whey tighten things this autumn.

Kalle Kniivilä 21h ago

@leffe @toxy @harrysintonen The advantage would be that it is totally independent of Google... except it maybe isn't, when you need to use Android apps... which is most apps.

🤔

@leffe @harrysintonen I think you will find interesting this video:

https://youtu.be/rJq9QOo8Ak0

EU is preparing an alternative. Slowly, yeah, but they are on it.

Why Europe Is Creating an Alternative to Visa & Mastercard

YouTube

Leif Samuelsson 18h ago

@andrewblasco @harrysintonen

It says it's a digital payment system, so no guarantee (yet) that it will work without support fom Google, Apple and Microsoft.

@leffe @harrysintonen Yeah, but it's a step in the right direction.

I agree with you, we need full control of our systems, especially in critical areas like education, state administration and military.

And it's quite simple to achieve: Invest in existing Linux solutions (and create specific apps when needed) and a forked Android. France is leading in that area.

Leif Samuelsson 18h ago

@andrewblasco @harrysintonen

The video talks about replacing payment cards with (existing) apps for payments. That logic just doesn't hold, as long as the app market is constrained. Are French authorities going to support users with #mobilelinux?

@andrewblasco this mentions nothing about offline or how that would work. Are you sure it's the same system they're talking about?