Harry Sintonen1d 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

Show threadOsma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦
This paves the way for digital euro, but affects in-person payments only, and relinquishes the consumers' chargeback right because even when delayed, debit is still debit. With buyer behavior moving more and more online, and remote purchases without chargeback right moving all the transaction risk to the consumer, it's not all good.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.html
@harrysintonen
Digital euro

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
Apr 13 at 2:57pmWeb