Cash is remarkably resistant to all the potential problems that could disable credit card transactions. For example, in 2003, much of the northeastern U.S. was affected by a power blackout that lasted over a day in some places, and of course credit card readers require power to operate. The servers that support credit card transactions have backup power (although only for a limited amount of time), but they're also vulnerable to network outages, software failures and deliberate attacks (we've seen how bad some of our major banks are at security). Having cash as a backup seems to be a prudent choice.
When I lived in Santa Cruz, we had a day-long internet outage due to a fiber-optic cable being cut, which led to most shops not taking CCs, despite there being no trouble with the power. A few mom-and-pop shops did good business by essentially agreeing to take IOUs; they wrote down CC #s on paper and manually ran them later, although afaik that's contrary to most CC companies' policy: http://www.mercurynews.com/centralcoast/ci_12115324
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Cash is remarkably resistant to all the potential problems that could disable credit card transactions. For example, in 2003, much of the northeastern U.S. was affected by a power blackout that lasted over a day in some places, and of course credit card readers require power to operate. The servers that support credit card transactions have backup power (although only for a limited amount of time), but they're also vulnerable to network outages, software failures and deliberate attacks (we've seen how bad some of our major banks are at security). Having cash as a backup seems to be a prudent choice.
When I lived in Santa Cruz, we had a day-long internet outage due to a fiber-optic cable being cut, which led to most shops not taking CCs, despite there being no trouble with the power. A few mom-and-pop shops did good business by essentially agreeing to take IOUs; they wrote down CC #s on paper and manually ran them later, although afaik that's contrary to most CC companies' policy: http://www.mercurynews.com/centralcoast/ci_12115324
Actually it is still accepted by CC companies to use the old hand operated machines that have a roller, that takes an impression of the card.
Not sure if those are still accepted in Europe; fairly sure they no longer work.