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 threadBrianKrebs22h ago
@harrysintonen Seems like good for the consumer, but also good for fraudsters, no?
Show threadHarry Sintonen

@briankrebs The fraud is limited by the fact that this system can only be exploited when the network connection is down. There also is limits for the amounts you can "credit", I believe, and the system is limited to cards issued in that particular country.

Yes, there is possibility for fraud, but these mitigating factors should limit it.

Apr 13 at 4:22pmWeb