This assumes that we will all operate as we did before electronic payments become common, but we probably won’t.Some of your reasoning no longer applies.”If the power goes out & you can’t use an ATM, you can still go manually visit the bank, walk up to a teller, and pull your money.”
You can, but only if the bank knows how much money you have.Nowadays, they use computers for that, because if they kept it on paper, you could go to each branch you can get to, withdraw all your money, then leg it with a multiple of your savings before they exchange ledgers.You could change things so that you only have one bank with your money in it and you must go there to get it, but people like the convenience of not being restricted to one place.If there’s a blackout, banks continue to use backup power for their communications and computing.If you manage to black them out for long enough that they can’t, they’ll likely delay teller service until they have something they can rely on.
“Your credit card is normally used in a purely electronic form (EG: swiping at a terminal to pay for stuff) but can also be run through a manual card imprinter, a physical receipt made, & copies kept by both customer & merchant to later prove of the transaction.”
Not necessarily, as they have been changing the design of the cards to make it harder.
It also lacks many of the security features that physical card use tends to have.
I’ll concede it’s an option, but as I say below, it’s an option with cryptocurrency as well.
“But how can you do any of that if your funds only exist in an electronic form that can’t be used/generated/maintained without power to the infrastructure?”
You can’t, as I said.I’m not a cryptocurrency supporter here.I’m just pointing out that the level of damage you would need to make it stop working is severe, and that similarly severe damage to other systems would have similarly destructive effects on most payment methods other than cash.
“But crypto currencies can’t be used at all if both the customer & merchant don’t have power to the various devices (SmartPhone, cash register, etc) & infrastructure (cell network, ISP, online digital wallet, etc) through which such a transaction requires to become official.”
This is not the case, really.It would work like a credit card would.
If you copy the card for use in the transaction, you keep the details until the power comes back and then transmit them to the card provider.The customer could similarly sign their payment and you could copy that.
The only device that needs to be powered during the transaction is the customer’s wallet device (possibly a phone).
If you use a dedicated device, it’s likely to last quite a long time on a battery as it won’t have radios draining the battery.
You can recharge it in a number of ways.In both cases, however, it’s possible that what you copied at the time either was fake then or has become invalid by the time you send it off, which is why most places don’t accept card payments when the machine is down..
