We've come full circle.
Credit cards were offline-only in the beginning. When have we lost this ability?
See https://www.google.com/search?num=10&sca_esv=5e043526353aa70...
Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
391–400 of 581 posts
Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Oh it's easy Can you use it without local ID/phone and with foreign bank account?
No because you need BankID which is issued by your bank and to get BankID you need a Swedish bank and a personnummer. You can use a foreign phone number with Swish but some banks don't allow it (or only allow some countries, e.g. finland).
Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
#393Every time I see posts like these related to fiat, my heart sinks. Despite pro privacy sentiments across the site, there is a concerning amount of people who have not only fallen to the trap of convenience, but even consider cash use suspicious or criminal (the morality of tax evasion is a whole different subject, the places where it's most popular often coincides with a corrupt, inefficient government). Soon, cash u…
> Cryptocurrency will take its place. It won't. Look at China. Cash is impossible to use and crypto is banned.
How do people pay for drugs, bribes, prostitutes, etc.?
Do they just accept the risk the government can see every payment?
Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
#394Some 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.
We just use our cards.
Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
On every flight I've been on recently, Internet was available to passengers. Surely a few KiB (I assume that this is what a credit or debit transaction requires) could go over this system?
US domestic? I've found it's somewhat rare to see here in the EU, but there are a few airlines that offer it.
That said, just because there is no passenger connectivity doesn't mean the airline doesn't have some, for operational reasons. Even if that's just a narrowband satellite or VHF (ACARS) link, credit card transactions take very little data (POS terminals are 80s technology, after all).
That said, I still don't think that that's too common – building out cabin Wi-Fi for card authorizations only is probably not worth it, given how hard it is to get away with fraud in an environment where every seat has a passenger name to it, and that name is often verified by the airline or government at the airport or at boarding time.
Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's more complex than that: The card actually has some nonvolatile storage with your current balance, which gets decremented each time you use it.
Yes, stored value cards are a very mature technology. For various reasons, they're mostly used in closed-loop systems these days (think laundromats, transit systems etc.), but historically there were open-loop deployments in many European countries, and in some countries, stored-value POS payments are still very popular, e.g. in Japan. It's a real shame that the entire world moved to online-only. Sure, it's much easi…
> historically there were open-loop deployments in many European countries
Indeed, there used to be things like "Moneo". The problem is that banks never trusted really these systems, so you were limited to, say, 50E of stored value. Also for some reason in Europe the readers of such cards have never been great, I guess because most devices were built on the cheap, so even if the transaction is offline and supposedly fast, you would have to wiggle your cards all around most readers for 2s until it's picked up.
In Hong Kong there is the Octopus card, which started as a closed loop subway card, but ended up being so loved that now you can pay litterally anything with it. It can store up to $500, and you can set it up to automatically top-up to $500 more per day linked to your bank account. Also accepting payments from octopus cards is very easy, you don't need a physical device and small businesses can just have the customer card tapped on their phone with a merchant app.
Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
#397Some 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…
> It's usually not said out loud, but cash is often considered to be dirty and criminal As a swede, your statement is outlandish and false. We use cash all of the time.
As a swede, your statement is false.
Most of us don't use cash all the time unless you're a kid or >60. I can't even remember the last time I used cash.
Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
#398We've come full circle. Credit cards were offline-only in the beginning. When have we lost this ability? See https://www.google.com/search?num=10&sca_esv=5e043526353aa70...
When everybody in the industry decided the implementation was more trouble than it’s worth. (Offline-capable chips, that is; embossers were 80% solemnization ceremony and 20% data entry aid, just like signatures as "cardholder verification", and are a non-starter from a security perspective.)
The mindset was one of ubiquitous Internet connectivity, which is cheaper than maintaining a complex stored-value or offline limit based solution.
Of course, this assumption does not include some externalities in case of large scale outages, maybe due to cyberattacks…
Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
#399Speaking about payment methods, I wonder what's the sentiment on HN about the new Digital Euro thing.
I've seen people claim it's the worst thing to ever happen and that governments will lock money and things like that.
But personally, after looking at their objectives (offline cash-like payments for example, where only the sender and the recipient know about the transaction) I'm pretty happy about this coming out (even though it still seems early in development)
Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
#400We've come full circle. Credit cards were offline-only in the beginning. When have we lost this ability? See https://www.google.com/search?num=10&sca_esv=5e043526353aa70...
Offline credit card transactions are still supported, and Square even supports it in the US.
Europe use of debit cards instead of credit cards is much higher than the US.