Visa Europe fscks up Friday night with other GDPR: 'God Dammit, Payment Refused' Businesses and punters in Europe are in for a long and frustrating night – after Visa's payment services in the region went TITSUP: a Total Inability To Support Usual Purchases. The credit card processor confirmed Friday it had suffered an outage and was working on a solution. Right now, you can't buy stuff online or in stores …
So we’re being told the future is cashless.
Yet many were only able to purchase stuff using cash.
Not a great advert for cashless is it?
I for one do not want to see a cashless society. A system crash, power outage or a communications failure would be sufficient to make us all literally penny less.
So that’s a no thanks from me.
"It was caused by a hardware failure" is no excuse - it is not even an adequate explanation.
I think I may call this Archtech's Rule. (It's high time I had one of my own).
"Anyone who decides to do something using a computer system is fully responsible for ALL consequences of that decision. There is no 'the computer made me do it' or 'the computer ate your money'".
Simultaneous identical ( or complementary) hardware failure on all their backups ? Wow.
Bad luck's a bugger. Really hurts when it hits, eh ?
Obviously there wouldn't be a single point of failure or a domino crash in a professionally-engineered system. So maybe it was done by amateurs, or worse, accountants.
Or may be they, like all the other financial IT systems in the world, have a complicated system which has been carefully engineerd to be redundant but where people missed some obscure chain of events where there was not enough redundancy. If you've worked in financial IT you'll understand how common that is, and how hard it is to get right.
If a piece of hardware can block some half a billion visa cards from working
That was my first thought when I heard about it on the radio - this was not caused by a hardware failure, this was caused by inadequate/faulty business continuity planning. If the BC plan had been adequate AND had been correctly implemented, then there would have been a minimal outage for a minimal period of time.
The scale of the outage (EU wide) and it's duration clearly shout that the BC plan was not adequate or was not correctly followed. So it was a preventable outage.
So what's that about having all your eggs in one basket ? Can't remember the last time I was offered the opportunity of having a Mastercard, it seemed everything was Visa these days.
"I'd rather have the odd outage than carry stuff with inherent value around with me. "
Says the bloke with no smartphone? And no experience of ID theft either :)
My wife and my mum don't like carrying cash around, and both have had their card cloned and lost several hundred quid as a result. We only got it back (my mum was too embarrassed to argue) when I made a complaint, as the card was used in the Netherlands and then in Malaysia an hour apart. Oh, and it got declined 8 times at the Malaysian ATM, but it turns out that if you keep trying it'll work (!?!?!).
" I've had to use cash about 5 times this year due to dinosaur organisations"
You're doing pretty well then. I have to, about once a month, pay cash because some twat hasn't got any, and their plastic doesn't work at the particular venue we're at. No, not every shop takes Visa/Amex/MC. No, your UK debit card won't work on the European network. Yes, it's annoying. Yes, it's exactly what happened last time.....
Funniest was going to giant snuffelmarkt (flea market), and my friend was confused at why he couldn't pay by card the one euro entrance fee or pretty much any of the stalls.
Kids these days....
Then again, I'm old fashioned enough to keep savings in gold and silver.
"No, your UK debit card won't work on the European network."
I call bullshit. I take a road trip across Europe every year and have to buy fuel, food and on occasion get cash out of an ATM, and can confirm that my UK debit card always works just fine in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary and Bulgaria. Also always worked fine in US. Further, you pre-emptively contradicted your own previous statement on this very subject by saying:
"... card cloned and lost several hundred quid as a result. We only got it back (my mum was too embarrassed to argue) when I made a complaint, as the card was used in the Netherlands and then in Malaysia an hour apart"
So the cloned card did in fact work in Netherlands and Malaysia?
- I don't carry cash.
- I've never had a card cloned (stop letting it out of your sight / refuse to plug it into anything dodgy-looking).
- I have an app for my bank that tells me if anyone is doing anything on my card, and specifically warns me immediately on big transactions. You can't do that with cash, and it's a prudent thing to do on any account.
- I carry several different types of card (it's not hard, a pre-pay MasterCard/Visa card costs you virtually nothing and works in every country I've ever tried it).
- At the end of the day, I'm not reliant on the card to purchase anything THERE AND THEN. Any significant purchase is considered, planned and done in advance. I've not going to starve even if Visa goes offline for a week.
Do you people not use Direct Debit for your bills, your mortgage/rent, your council tax? How is that any different?
Side-point: I've never been mugged or burgled. But for sure if I had, I've rather they stole cards I can cancel than cash that would just disappear.
"I have an app for my bank that tells me if anyone is doing anything on my card, and specifically warns me immediately on big transactions."
being curious, which bank ? I am using HSBC and have seen nothing to suggest they'd tell me about every transaction (or even just large ones - but theirs is dumb in some ways)...
But at least for a transfer to some (random) sort code + account number (as might be entered by a hacker) it needs a security code to be entered from a credit-card size calculator style device...
"At the end of the day, I'm not reliant on the card to purchase anything THERE AND THEN." - not wanting to suggest any problem occurs but there are times when some airline shuts their doors unexpectedly, or a volcanic dust cloud grounds all flights, so there may be a time when a large and unexpected expense (several unscheduled days in what might be the last vacant room in a luxury hotel), so things can happen however much you usually plan.
"Do you people not use Direct Debit for your bills.... How is that any different?"
(a) they are either for fixed sums, or you need to be notified in advance, and (b) the DD Guarantee means you can get a refund quite quickly if something goes wrong, hopefully without any bank charges if you go overdrawn temporarily.
YMMV, and while cashless works for you, it seems like plenty of readers prefer to have use of both. I have no plans to move to Sweden which is mostly cashless - and may cause some tourists problems if they have even a temporary block on card use...
" I take a road trip across Europe every year and have to buy fuel, food and on occasion get cash out of an ATM, and can confirm that my UK debit card always works just fine in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary and Bulgaria".
Except when it doesn't - as the article points out.
"I take a road trip across Europe every year and have to buy fuel, food and on occasion get cash out of an ATM, and can confirm that my UK debit card always works just fine"
We drove east on the M4 from Bristol on Friday and wondered why the westbound M4 was solid and notr moving all the way to the Bath junction .... later on we heard the news of long delays at the Severn Bridge tolls due to people getting to the barrier and finding they were unable to pay by card - assuming the queue was going all that way then that's a 25 mile queue.
Anyway, it perhaps explains why the bridge authorities resisited these new fangled credit/debit cards for decades!
In the future ordinary people will have no money anyway, so it won't make any difference. Look at the graphs - everywhere on the Web - showing the increasing proportion of wealth owned by the richest 1% (or less).
Ordinary people will bunk in dormitories run by their owners, er employers, eat at company troughs, er canteens, and work the rest of the time to pay some of the interest on their ever-increasing debts.
"Ordinary people will bunk in dormitories run by their owners, er employers, eat at company troughs, er canteens, and work the rest of the time to pay some of the interest on their ever-increasing debts."
"I load sixteen tons,
What do ya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
I load sixteen tons,
What do ya get?
And I owe my soul to the company store."
- Sixteen Tons (My preference is the Tennessee Ernie Ford version of it, but ymmv.)
That was a Thing; It was largely outlawed in the 1930's here in the Untied Snakes of Amerika, but there are probably a few that still exist here and world-wide. Nice idea in that magical place known as Theory, but here in Reality? Not so much.
Cashless is all well and good, assuming you're happy with all your purchases being tracked and profiled ot course.
However, always ensure you have enough cash in for your last meal and a few drinks so you can sit back and watch the world collapse into chaos with a full stomach.
Went to a beer festival last year- the organisers were touting the whole event as cashless and were telling people not to bother bringing cash- even went as far as insinuated that cash would probably not be accepted. When I got there, there were massive lines at all the paypoints, turns out the entire credit card system had crashed. Thankfully, I'd bought cash with me. On the plus side, there wasn't any queues at any of the bars.
"Tonight I Tried Some Unusual Payments.
The barman took the promissory note from me and I stood bemused as he proceeded to put it in a little drawer that went "ding" as it opened. No PIN was requested and he kept the note, telling me to bog off when I asked for it back. How am I to pay for the next round without my promissory note if they won't give it back? Should I call the police?"
Have we reached that stage yet?
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