Global IT outage shows dangers of cashless society, campaigners say

https://lemmy.zip/comment/11914559

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Campaigners say the chaos caused by the global IT outage last week underlines the risk of moving towards a cashless society.

Supermarkets, banks, pubs, cafes, train stations and airports were all hit by the failure of Microsoft systems on Friday, leaving many unable to accept electronic payments.

The Payment Choice Alliance (PCA), which campaigns against the move towards a cashless society, lists 23 firms and groups, at least some of whose outlets take only credit or debit cards.

Cash payments increased for the first time in a decade last year, according to UK Finance, which represents banks.

The GMB Union said the outage reinforced what it had been saying for years: that “cash is a vital part of how our communities operate”.

In March, McDonald’s, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Gregg’s suffered problems with their payment systems.

The original article contains 416 words, the summary contains 135 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Y'know, unless the EU comes out with that digital currency that doesn't require a network. It's like value papers, but in form of cryptographic hashes - and I refuse to call it "crypto", because of the obvious connotations.

But you could call it off-grid crypto, though it is easier to track than actual physical cash. But money can pass a lot of hands from point A to point Z, and if it doesn't need to touch any network between these points, than it becomes quite possible to misuse that digital cash, unless it's somehow ear marked for each transfer.

I await specifications before it can actually be considered viable, but if successful, it could become the new standard...

And maybe us northern Europeans could stop having to print value papers in France, because that makes me feel much more dirty than using crypto.