Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Estonia are soon enabling offline debit card payments for at least seven days without network connectivity.

[wariat@mastodon.social]

@sef
In my opinion, it's a really bad idea, but no one ever asks me

@harrysintonen

[christopherkunz@chaos.social]

@harrysintonen In addition to Russia cutting the cables, my concern is for VISA and other US credit card providers cutting service to specific, targeted individuals or even whole countries. We've already seen precedent for both.

[kierkegaanks@beige.party]

@harrysintonen even when they do it

[briankrebs@infosec.exchange]

@harrysintonen Seems like good for the consumer, but also good for fraudsters, no?

[harrysintonen@infosec.exchange]

@briankrebs The fraud is limited by the fact that this system can only be exploited when the network connection is down. There also is limits for the amounts you can "credit", I believe, and the system is limited to cards issued in that particular country.

Yes, there is possibility for fraud, but these mitigating factors should limit it.

[leeloo@c.im]

@harrysintonen
It works for debit cards? How?

The one reason that I have accepted having a debit card is the absolute guarantee that it cannot be used to spend money I don't have. Otherwise, that's a credit card, and I will not accept a credit card contract.

Without access to my bank, how does this guarantee work?

[v_d_richards@literatur.social]

@harrysintonen

Humanity already enabled this with physical money.

I mean: good that working internet is not required for paying with cards, but not making paying with actual money nearly impossible ( which would technically in the worst case not even need electricity) would have prevented making this new step necassary in the first place.

[harrysintonen@infosec.exchange]

@leeloo See https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/payment-preparedness/offline-payments/ for rough explanation.

[claudex@pouet.chapril.org]

@harrysintonen Belgium had an electronic offline payment system called Proton, it was stopped in 2014. It was always offline, you had to charge the card with the desired amount which can be used afterwards in every shop with a terminal

[leeloo@c.im]

@harrysintonen
Nothing about my question.

[harrysintonen@infosec.exchange]

@christopherkunz A solution that mitigates this risk would be preferable, indeed. As reported in https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr250228_1~7f0697af45.en.html in 2022 only 37% of payments used national systems. Even those likely have many dependencies to systems outside of EU.