[pigsty]

I don’t trust that the infrastructure will always work.

I’ve had my cards rejected randomly. Since I travel a lot and mainly use cards abroad, I’ve had my cards rejected more times than not. It’s pretty troublesome to be stranded somewhere and unable to get a hotel or ride a train because your card was rejected.

I always keep a fat wad of cash for that reason. Also that at any time my bank could be shut down, governments or banks could decide I don’t have a right to buy something, power outages could render payments useless, or hackers could easily take down a network if they were motivated (and state-level actors have plenty of motivation now).

[version_five]

This is mostly my reason too. Using payments networks makes you beholden to somebody else and reliant on their systems working properly. But nobody selling you stuff gives a shit about that, if it doesn't work, it's your fault. So it's better to take responsibility and keep cash and not be stuck because of other people's problems.

Concretely, I went across town last year with my wife to try a popular counter-service restaurant. Their payment system wasn't working, and during the time I paid for and waited for my order, they turned away about 10 other people who didn't have cash to pay.

[jwestbury]

I generally just keep multiple cards from multiple providers. I have a Visa, MasterCard, and Amex, no two from the same bank. I even have a card from a foreign bank. This doesn't solve problems with local infrastructure (e.g., vendor's payment system is down), but it does solve most other issues.