Mastodawn

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

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Leeloo Apr 13

@harrysintonen
It works for debit cards? How?

The one reason that I have accepted having a debit card is the absolute guarantee that it cannot be used to spend money I don't have. Otherwise, that's a credit card, and I will not accept a credit card contract.

Without access to my bank, how does this guarantee work?

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Mormegil

@leeloo
With my first payment card (ca 2000), there was definitely no "absolute guarantee" you couldn't spend money you didn't have: merchants and ATMs were not 100% online, so you could pay more than you had and it would be discovered in some kind of nightly sync. (You'd owe the bank with a high rate.) I wouldn't be surprised if the corresponding terms would still be in the bank T&C. Even though practically, you hardly hit this today. (Maybe airplane onboard shopping?)
@harrysintonen