Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026 • Hacker News Board

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#21

Post by londons_explore » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:16 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #2

> The online function shall apply to physical payment cards and accompanying PIN code when purchasing essential goods such as food, medicine and fuel. Is this a typo where they meant to say “the offline function”? If I’m reading this right, the goal is to allow food, fuel, and medicine purchases with card + PIN in offline mode. Seems like a reasonable goal. I wonder what the technical details will look like. Will the…

The card itself knows its balance and is authorised to approve transactions up to a limit fully offline.

The UK already does this in some shops for low value items for NFC payments. You can tell the offline transactions because they immediately say 'approved' rather than taking a few seconds.

If it turns out the card approved something 'wrongly', for example because you had previously reported the card lost to the bank, then the bank refunds the transaction and claims the value back from the merchant. That's why many merchants have their terminals set to require online payments.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#22

Post by elictronic » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #5

Some context might be useful here. I spent some time living Sweden not too long ago and Swedes practically don't use cash. It's usually not said out loud, but cash is often considered to be dirty and criminal, to the point that most don't have any at all. Digital payments are very convenient and deeply integrated, so long as you have a local ID which allows you use the local payment system Swish etc. This worked nice…

Physical attacks are also possible, this site focuses on software so much of the time, while acts occur in the physical world. Cyberattacks are grey areas, but based on some of the undersea cable cutting and factory fires Russia has been performing, physical attacks are very much on the table if you can obscure the source.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#23

Post by samus » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

ciupicri wrote: post #14

yieldcrv wrote: post #3

offline key signing and broadcasting later should be a simple thing although heavily misunderstood, this is built into cryptocurrencies since day 1 (many critics have long thought crypto requires power and internet access, many proponents also don't know otherwise) with card networks learning from competition and functionally being public-only keys, this should be even simpler to implement

What cryptocurrencies work offline without Internet access to the ledger?

All of them? As long as eventually the connection is restored and the transaction can propagate over the network.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#24

Post by whatevaa » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #19

kosinus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debit cards are most definitely accepted on planes.

Even without internet connection? Edit: OK maybe there's different level of trust and some take a leap of faith :) In my experience debit didn't work but it appears that its not the same everywhere.

Yeah. They just accept some loss on bounced payments. Got a free meal (well it was a sandwich, nothing fancy) like that.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#25

Post by cyanydeez » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #9

It's not about paying by cash but paying by card offline. How is this going to be implemented I wonder. On planes they often accept credit cards even when there's no internet. I assume this is a trust in-credit-based system because they don't accept debit cards, i.e. if you are worth being trusted with a card you can have your sandwich now and we will take care of the bank processing once we are on the ground. So may…

Airlines typically are already in possession of your credit card, so most likely it's just "if he stiffs us, we can always find the carrier they registered with"

So it's not _just_ blind trust.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#26

Post by kosinus » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #19

kosinus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debit cards are most definitely accepted on planes.

Even without internet connection? Edit: OK maybe there's different level of trust and some take a leap of faith :) In my experience debit didn't work but it appears that its not the same everywhere.

I have no idea how the terminals operate, but I was on a flight two days ago and paid with a debit card. The flight otherwise required devices to be in airplane mode. Though there are flights that offer wifi, so there's a good chance the terminal can communicate with the ground, but they just don't allow anything else.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#27

Post by huhtenberg » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #9

It's not about paying by cash but paying by card offline. How is this going to be implemented I wonder. On planes they often accept credit cards even when there's no internet. I assume this is a trust in-credit-based system because they don't accept debit cards, i.e. if you are worth being trusted with a card you can have your sandwich now and we will take care of the bank processing once we are on the ground. So may…

Using a card-to-card transfer of some sort of credits/units, with eventual online settlement. Using chip cards, obviously. The tech for this existed since at least mid '00s.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#28

Post by motohagiography » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

offline mode has been the limiting factor in almost all electronic payments. there was a convention where the single use keys became limited use keys so that cards could make offline payments in low amounts that could be reconciled later. it created a risk and a vulnerability to be managed, and there was at least one exploit against it if I remember correctly.

imo, the mandate creates an interesting technical constraint on any CBDC standard, where the offline mode limits the effectiveness of a "turn off" of someone's money, as there will always be some feature where they can use their money to buy food and fuel. For now I am interpreting this mandate as constructive to civil liberties.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#29

Post by Imustaskforhelp » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

spullara wrote: post #7

It's a check, they have invented checks.

atleast with cheques tho there was a way to safeguard the payments of a cheques by crossing of cheques and when I had learnt about cheques there were a lot of things that can be done via cheques like endorsing etc.

But there was always a risk of cheques being unsafe so that's why there is bank drafts. It seems that this is more similar to bank drafts than cheques.

If you really try to sum it up, I know I am going to do a grave misjustice but even a cash could be thought of a cheque from the govt. (well a cheque is meant to be unconditional but its based on the banking laws of a govt. and cash is a promissory note which is a promise made by the govt. so yeah....)

As another HN commenter pointed out here,this decision might be partially due to swedish culture of how they view cash which you can find here.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#30

Post by tecleandor » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #19

kosinus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debit cards are most definitely accepted on planes.

Even without internet connection? Edit: OK maybe there's different level of trust and some take a leap of faith :) In my experience debit didn't work but it appears that its not the same everywhere.

Yep, but IIRC only if they are credit, not debit. I guess they also have certain special conditions with the processor...

Edit: I've also seen it when paying on the cafe car while on train trips in Spain. Even without any cellphone/internet coverage they'll let you pay, but only with credit.