Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

riksbank.se

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 581 posts

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

#211

Post by varispeed »

zx8080 wrote: post #179
varispeed wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it feels less risky carrying a debit card Depends. Very long time ago I was approached by a group of seemingly friendly people asking for direction, then I felt sharp object to my belly and they told me to walk slowly towards cash point. They said they'll stab me if I don't withdraw all money I can. So I did. When cards were not popular, I would have small amount of cash in the wallet and anything more substantial…

> then I felt sharp object to my belly and they told me to walk slowly towards cash point. Wow. What country is/was that?

London, UK

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

#212

Post by OptionOfT »

jhbadger wrote: post #208
tdeck wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the same thing in the US about small businesses that only take cash, but it's still pretty normal to use cash in the US.

People forget that the credit card companies charge businesses to process transactions. Some stores/restaurants even give discounts for paying in cash because of this.

On the other hand, cash has its costs. You need to have a register, more training, more insurance, processing of cash at the bank, having it deposit cash at the end of every day, etc.

With credit cards you pay a fee, but you don't have to deal with all of those other things that people often don't consider.

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

#213

Post by input_sh »

jobigoud wrote: post #170
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…

How do you pay for things that are just one or two euros? In my local boulangerie they don't accept cards for less than 5€, so if I just want a baguette I need to have cash.

Oh it's easy: they don't use Visa / Mastercard, but their own domestic system called Swish, which is much cheaper for businesses and of course completely free for individuals.

Similar instant payment systems have really blossomed across the world, especially in recent years. One by one, countries are finally figuring out that there's no reason to rely on American brands for all of the payment processing.

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

#214

Post by eric6071 »

freetime2 wrote: post #190

I'm not sure what they have in mind for supporting offline payments, but I think that Japan's FeliCa-based [1] electronic money systems (Suica, iD, etc) are pretty impressive. They are most typically used to pay for transportation, but also widely accepted at stores, vending machines, etc. Balances are stored on the card, and it's very fast to use and seems secure for the most part. Recently it's also available on an…

Hong Kong octopus is also great

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

#215

Post by al_borland »

mrtksn wrote: post #38
al_borland wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why not, they can be run just like a credit card through the same network. When a debit card prompts for a PIN, don’t enter it, press submit, and it runs as credit instead of debit, but functionally works the same as far as the card-holder is concerned. It might take slightly longer to settle, and the merchant likely gets charged higher fees, but it works just fine. When I got my first debit card 20+ year…

Having a credit card requires some amount of trustworthiness. Anyone can get a debit card, they even sell it in supermarkets.

They’ll give a credit card to just about anyone. It will just have a low credit limit and extra high interest.

Most people who have terrible credit have still have credit cards.

Debit cards are from banks, not supermarkets. A debit card is backed by a checking account, typically.

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

#216

Post by markdown »

jhbadger wrote: post #208
tdeck wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the same thing in the US about small businesses that only take cash, but it's still pretty normal to use cash in the US.

People forget that the credit card companies charge businesses to process transactions. Some stores/restaurants even give discounts for paying in cash because of this.

In my country if you pay with credit card at a grocery store (or anywhere) you get 3.5% tacked on to your bill. Merchants don't eat the cost, and don't hide it in the listed price of goods; it's explicitly passed on.

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

#217

Post by mercanlIl »

jhbadger wrote: post #208
tdeck wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the same thing in the US about small businesses that only take cash, but it's still pretty normal to use cash in the US.

People forget that the credit card companies charge businesses to process transactions. Some stores/restaurants even give discounts for paying in cash because of this.

IME (in Canada), the cash discount is surprisingly close to 15%, which is approximately the sales tax in most provinces.

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

#218

Post by ajsnigrutin »

OptionOfT wrote: post #212
jhbadger wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forget that the credit card companies charge businesses to process transactions. Some stores/restaurants even give discounts for paying in cash because of this.

On the other hand, cash has its costs. You need to have a register, more training, more insurance, processing of cash at the bank, having it deposit cash at the end of every day, etc. With credit cards you pay a fee, but you don't have to deal with all of those other things that people often don't consider.

But they already have all this, there are very few merchants that don't actually accept cash at all.

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

#219

Post by avianlyric »

g-mork wrote: post #47
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…

The EMV standard has long supported an offline transaction flow. AFAIK it was the default almost everywhere in Finland circa 2011, contactless there was almost always instantaneous. Digging into why that was compared to the invariable wait when using contactless in the UK revealed this flow. The card has a variety of risk counters on it that allow it to securely decide whether an offline transaction can proceed, at l…

Yes the EMV standard has offline card payments baked into it, and most banks in the EU and UK used to use offline transactions for contactless.

Your experiences in the UK are almost certainly linked to the card issuer you were using (was it a Monzo card by any chance), and nothing to do with it being the UK. The vast majority of the legacy banks have always used offline transactions for contactless.

However there has been a bit of shift towards online transactions, driven by EU rules likes strong customer authentication, which requires regular pin entries determined by cumulative spending and duration limits (which ever is hit first). It’s a lot easier to reliably meet the requirements of SCA using online transactions.

As for how offline transactions work. It’s reasonable simply. The terminal asks the card to sign the transaction using the cards private key. Now there is an extremely complicated set of rules around how liability shifts in the event of a fraud claim, depending on many factors like the type of transaction, if a pin was entered and validated by the card, if the card ask to go online and the terminal ignored the request, they type of merchant, the exact region your in etc etc.

But regardless of all that nonsense. The technical process is very simple. The terminal has the transaction cryptographically signed using symmetric encryption with a private key that is only known to the card and the issuer of the card. That signed transaction can later be presented to the issuer so the merchant gets paid.

Given it’s a symmetric key, you may wonder what happens in the event of a dispute between the issuer and the merchant, where the issuer claims they received a forged transaction. To which the answer is, the issuer sends a signed and sealed letter to card network operator saying they have double checked the transaction signature, and believe it to be forged. And if anyone doesn’t believe them, they can sue em (this is not at all a joke, it’s literally the documented and contractual process used by the major banks and card networks).

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

#220

Post by ajsnigrutin »

tcshit wrote: post #126
daneel_w wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's usually not said out loud, but cash is often considered to be dirty and criminal ..." Are you sure this isn't impression you've gotten from isolated reactions involving a small number of individuals, perhaps just a single individual? I can't relate to the sentiment at all, having lived here for just over three decades and experiencing the popularity shift from cash to debit card. I can, in fact, not recall a…

I’d say he’s correct, people under 60 that uses cash are considered, if not criminal, at least suspicious, like they have something to hide. Or simply wackos. I haven’t used cash for the last 15 years or so. Except for when I had carpenters at home who wanted to get paid in cash (to avoid taxes, so called black money).

So do you like always take split bills for everything? Like when eg. 4 coworkers go to eat together (ie. not a situation where one person pays everything)? Over here in the balkans/mitteleuropa you just put some approximate amount of cash on the table. Same for kids, you're not giving a kid your credit card when you send him to a bakery to get bread, you give him a couple of euros in cash.
Post reply on HN