3d ago

Nordics and Estonia rolling out offline card payment back-up in case internet cut

www.reuters.com

reuters.com

Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Estonia rolling out offline card payment systems to provide a back-up if internet connections are lost, including due to sabotage, Bank of Finland board member Tuomas Valimaki said on Wednesday.

The plans come after the Baltic Sea region has suffered several instances of unexplained damage to critical undersea infrastructure in recent years, and as Western intelligence services have accused Russia of committing various acts of sabotage - a charge the Kremlin rejects.

"The likelihood of major disruptions has increased because the geopolitical situation has changed worldwide. There is a war in Europe, and around that war, there is all sorts of hybrid influence and harassment, which may involve disrupting or cutting connections," Valimaki told Reuters, referring to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

He said payments were a potential target because of their critical role in everyday life.

[...]

The European Central Bank is planning to introduce a digital euro, which would enable instant payments, but Valimaki said it would take years to establish the system even if it secured the political backing it needs from all euro zone countries.

In another push to protect financial security, Finland is also introducing a national system of reserve bank accounts. Under the system, the National Financial Stability Authority would be able to give Finns access to their savings even if their bank was unable to operate, Valimaki said.

[...]

6 comments

We have had this for a long time in Norway I believe. Not sure about Visa and MasterCard, but for our own BankAxept. Most debit cards have both BankAxept and Visa in Norway. So we pay with BankAxept most places by default, except for online stores. BankAxept is either free or extremely cheap compared to Visa.
If the terminal does not connect with the bank, then you just have to sign the receipt.
Terminals also often have batteries, so they even support being without power.
So if bank goes down then payments below 1500NOK (~150 euros) is just a signature on a receipt.
- Yep this should work SEPA-wide, In Germany POS terminals occasionally fall back to the old way of doing things (print out a long-ass reciept, sign it), the card then is just a way to transfer bank details, the actual authorisation is the signature, can be done offline, harkens back to the Eurocheque system. Basically the same thing as, I might be giving away my age, writing your bank details on a postcard and signing it, "yes I want to subscribe to your newspaper", just that you don't have to write out your account number.
  Sounds like it's vulnerable to fraud and abuse but if your bank authorised you to debit other accounts like that and complaints or chargebacks pile up you're in all kinds of trouble: The bank knows where you live. Chargebacks also cost an arm and a leg, and if a customer charges back illegitimately you might have to go to court to recover it.

Here's another article from March, bit of context.

The Netherlands used to have this from like 1995-2015, guess we went too far into the future. I can imagine if this existed outside of the regular banks it could catch on here. Main reason it died is because banks switched from the 'prepaid chip' to the wireless chip.

Wow. To live in a place where the government tries to keep the society stable. Must be nice.

it is like JCB in Japan or localised QR based payments such as QRIS on ASEAN countries.

6 comments