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

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

#441

Post by wodenokoto »

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…

I’m a millennial and even I remember when all card payments were offline.

I remember a bar I worked at had trouble because some customers had begun writing wrong signatures and the receipt had been rejected by the bank the following week.

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

#442

Post by upcoming-sesame »

rkomorn wrote: post #134
upcoming-sesame wrote: post #127

Here in southern Europe on the other hand, cash is a crucial part of the tax evasion economy

Somewhat tangential (sorry), but in my part of southern Europe, cash change machines seem to be getting close to ubiquitous. I wonder if that hinders tax evasion at all since there's presumably a pretty reliable paper trail of cash transactions.

You mean ATMs ? It is still harder to prove where the cash you took out of the ATM went to in comparison to card payments, but yeah, if you take a big amount of cash out of the ATM then it would be easy to flag you

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

#443

Post by jaza »

chairmansteve wrote: post #175

Back in the day, we used these machines to take a paper imprint of the card. You would get a copy and give it to the bank. There was a phone number you could ring to check if the card was valid. I never phoned the number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter

This was before my time, but older folks have told me that in the early days of credit cards here in Australia (70s and 80s), for larger purchases at department stores (which were virtually the only merchants who accepted credit cards back then), it was common for the checkout person to phone your bank to get authorisation for the transaction, before you could walk out the door with the merchandise.

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

#444

Post by vidarh »

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…

This is funny to me, because I'm old enough to remember when card payments all used to be offline...

And even paper based.

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

#445

Post by silvestrov »

daneel_w wrote: post #50
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…

> "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…

Same in Denmark with cash: anybody below 60 using cash in a supermarket is very likely having dirty money.

Cash is simply not used anymore by normal people.

Electronic payment (including between friends) just works here. It is easier and faster to pay with mobilepay than to use cash.

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

#446

Post by immibis »

akmarinov wrote: post #419
jdblair wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s because credit card benefits suck in Europe and there’s no point to using them. If you need credit, there are credit options with much lower rates than what credit cards offer. And the reason credit card benefits suck is due to european interchange fee caps and regulation.

I don't know that I'd call not paying an extra 5% just to receive 1% back "sucking". It seems like a win-win to me. If you need something, pay for it (with that extra 4% saving) instead of jumping through a million hoops to pretend it's free.

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

#447

Post by petesergeant »

lxgr wrote: post #395
messe wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In addition, there were commonly seatback airphones on big planes in the 80s and 90s.

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

#448

Post by tempay »

andrewshadura wrote: post #420
6yyyyyy wrote: post #352

Earlier 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.

Not in the Netherlands, no. The card can be a bank card, and you can be billed at the end of the month automatically through direct debit. It also wouldn't work as you describe, as the terminal at the point of entry doesn't know how much to charge you since it doesn't know where your journey ends.

Some transit systems work by putting a hold on your card for a nominal amount. When you finish your journey it then only claims the cost of your journey

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

#449

Post by lmz »

6yyyyyy wrote: post #352
omk wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think metro trains in countries like The Netherlands and Singapore use this approach where in you tap your cards and entry and exit and you are billed usually somewhere at the end of the day.

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.

There's stored value and then there's "account based ticketing" where your card is just an ID and the final amount will be debited daily.

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

#450

Post by j4hdufd8 »

andrewshadura wrote: post #420
6yyyyyy wrote: post #352

Earlier 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.

Not in the Netherlands, no. The card can be a bank card, and you can be billed at the end of the month automatically through direct debit. It also wouldn't work as you describe, as the terminal at the point of entry doesn't know how much to charge you since it doesn't know where your journey ends.

It definitely exists in Amsterdam, no? When I visit I just tap my card/phone on NFC enabled card checking machines (which exist in and out of the stations)
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