[caseysoftware]

I don't think it's just a privacy issue. We've seen companies like Facebook, Twitter, Chase, and even Mastercard cut off groups they consider undesirable.

For social media, it's irritating but the ability to stop you from collecting or spending "your" money is terrifying because it could be applied by policy or accident and the result is the same. No one should have that power.

[roenxi]

And what if a business gets cut off? Or the local internet/cell tower system goes down for 24 hours? I have a local grocers near me where the card scanning machine sometimes breaks. The centralised cashless system is great when it works but it has a lot of complicated parts that require time and specialist knowledge to fix.

It would be royally foolish to phase out cash for small transactions. The option needs to be there.

[fyfy18]

Card payments, including contactless payments, can be done offline. However the card has to be configured by the bank to allow this, which I guess some do not.

[PeterisP]

It's a very specific notion of "done" - you can record an offline authorization event; so the customer-visible part is done, but the actual payment is not.

The merchant is not going to have any access to that money whatsoever until/unless connectivity is restored. They can't pay their suppliers or employees with that money while they're offline.

It's pretty much the digital equivalent of scribbling "Bob authorised to pay me $12.34" on a notebook that you're going to bring to the bank afterwards.

[fyfy18]

Even if the transaction is online, you don't see the money in your bank account straight away. It takes a few days for card payments to settle, and usually the payment processor will have a predefined schedule as to when you get paid. The context of my comment was on the payment terminal being offline for a day or two.

[tastroder]

Emphasis on "can". The system at the point of sale that processes the card has to support that as well, quite a few of them don't and rely on some sort of centralized infrastructure to function, at least around here in Germany.

[lioeters]

I agree, it's about much more than privacy - the right to have transactions (financial and otherwise) without intermediation and ubiquitous surveillance by governments/corporations is a huge moral issue of whether we live in a free society or a human farm. This is the stuff cyberpunk dystopia are made of!

[dzhiurgis]

The real problem here is lack of accountability and consumer protection from these companies not the funds themselves...