Yep. I tap my credit card to get on the bus. NFC/digital, but offline. Transaction gets posted usually the next day.
Low risk that I might get a free fare using a defunct credit card, but by the time that I’ve tapped, they’ve collected enough information to hunt me down and kill me in my home.
Yeah, they don't necessarily close the stores because of the inability to pay (credit cards still work, as does cash), but because the registers are down, and it would take forever to figure out what everything costed and conduct the transactions.
Our local village stores still have price stickers or lists for everything, and they take cash, so they can stay open. But try that at the Carrefour checkout register.
Some stores don't even have people at the registers, anymore. It's all self-checkout and there's just someone lingering around, to help and stop shoplifting.
I remember once, at a super busy coffee shop downtown where all the workers regularly went, the payment system went completely down - they did not skip a beat - they wrote paper IOUs for each customer and asked them to settle up the next day. It was amazing to watch. Needless to say, I settled my IOU the next day.
