Obviously this is about the power outage in Spain.
While normally, if a card declines, people would probably have to leave their IDs with the restaurant while they went to get a withdrawl from their bank; this is a power outage, withdrawls wouldn’t work. It would be silly to arrest people because of a power outage. So I’m assuming people just have to give the restaurant owner/management their identity info with a promise to pay?
And power outages shouldn’t affect buses, since they run on gasoline/diesel, but the payment system processing transit passes might not work. Do buses still get run during a power outage and they just let people on for free, or do they just shut down the bus lines?
tehmics@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
When I worked in a restaurant we still had paper bills in the office we could write up if our system was down. If you wanted to pay with card, we would offer to write down your card info and charge it later, or accept cash only. We’d always inform new customers of this before taking their order.
If someone already ordered and was unable to pay we’d just take the loss on good faith that they’d return to pay, no holding ID or anything like that. It’s a relatively small loss for the restaurant to maintain a good reputation. Orders get comped all the time for more trivial reasons, and food cost is already a major part of a restaurant’s overhead.
But if power is out, then that generally means the kitchen isn’t functioning either unless the restaurant has generators
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Yeah, credit cards were originally similar to checks in how they were handled by stores and restaurants. I loved those old clunky sliding machines that you put the cards into and KACHUNKed it onto a carbon copy receipt!
tehmics@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I’ve only seen those in movies, and I haven’t even had an embossed card in years. but most people (rightfully so) would refuse having their card info written anywhere these days. Things have really changed
ccunning@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Last time I saw one of those and the only time I can recall having one used on my own card was during a power outage at a restaurant circa 2000 on a roadtrip.
It seemed like a relic even at the time.
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
The remarkable thing is that modern chip-and-pin cards do support that sort of “offline” transaction, although fortunately without the carbon copy paper. Specifically, a non-networked credit card terminal can present a transaction to the chip, the chip will cryptographically sign this transaction in a unique way, and the terminal will store it for later submittal to the credit card company, when an online connection is possible.
For a typical “online” transaction when there are no connectivity issues, the third step would send the transaction immediately to the credit card company, so they can have the option of declining the charge. The cryptography is otherwise the same, and it’s why offline transactions are possible.
Some vendors like SNCF (the national rail operator) in France use offline transactions for their ticket vending machines at rural stations, where there’s no guarantee of being within mobile phone service. The card issuer also usually programs some safeguards to prevent abuse, such as X number of offline max and then an online transaction is mandatory, or a limit on the value of purchases (eg $50 max for offline). After all, there cannot be a check against one’s credit limit when offline.
In the USA, it is exceedingly rare for credit cards to be issued as chip-and-pin, and while offline transactions can be performed with chip-and-signature cards, it’s rarely enabled since most/all terminals in the USA have been online since the introduction of electronic credit card processing.
Contactless chip cards might have changed the calculus though, since there is no PIN at all for these transactions. So perhaps issuers might allow a few offline transactions when contactless.