In addition it discriminates against anyone who finds themselves even temporarily without power for their payment device whether they are a customer or a seller.
But as the technology gets better and more reliable this gets rarer and rarer so that in the end it discriminates against those who already lack a different kind of power: social and political power. That is, the poor, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the poorly educated, the illiterate and innumerate, those whose grasp of the local language is poor. I'm sure the list could be expanded.
> In addition it discriminates against anyone who finds themselves even temporarily without power for their payment device whether they are a customer or a seller.
And makes it more difficult to anyone who is outside their country of origin. Many payment apps are limited to residents and nationals only, while others are avaialble on specific country app stores.
Like the migrant family fleeing from they country I met this evening. They told me they were stranded here while travelling to a better country.
Neither her or I have banking apps that can talk to each other. But I was able to gift him enough for dinner for his family today. Quick interaction,from my wallet to their hand, no QR code to be scanned, no database to be updated.
I'm not going to reliably charge my phone. I dont care about my phone. They're terrible devices that do everything they do badly except call and text. I'd much rather have a wallet and keys and paper boarding passes.
Or if you broke/lost your phone and can't buy a replacement as the only way to pay was with your phone, and then you get a phone but to restore your data and apps you need the credentials app which was on your old phone. . .
It will be real fun with the incoming widespread blackouts.
In Sweden a while ago an entire chain of supermarket had to close for a weekend because some hack that happened to a company in USA completely blocked their capability to process payments.
Also occasional downtime of debt card network does occur.
That's a bit strange because here in Norway if the payment terminal in my local supermarket loses contact with the payment processor the checkout operator just print two copies of the receipt and has you sign one that they keep. When the terminal regains contact it uploads the transactions and life carries on.
>In addition it discriminates against anyone who finds themselves even temporarily without power
They can scan your card with a thing that doesn't use power, but most places I saw that were at places like gun shows where they shouldn't have had an issue taking a check either, since either way there was gonna be some kind of background check.
For context, I sold stock out of my IRA a third(ish) time recently, because I had so many issues stemming from a set of phone scammers who hijacked calls at the carrier level in 412 around the time I got laid off from my last full time role.
I hope that the same folks doing that didn't also impersonate the IRS when I tried to call the last time -- I'd been told over and over if you have questions, call about how to declare income, and the person I got was super rude, even threatening. Made some smart ass comment about whether I was taking notes "my senator" in a sarcastic tone of voice when I tried to ask how to declare what little income I had.
Anyways TL;DR: lots of places don't handle loss of power well, or even just reverting to 90s era social Norms in an emergency ;-)
But as the technology gets better and more reliable this gets rarer and rarer so that in the end it discriminates against those who already lack a different kind of power: social and political power. That is, the poor, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the poorly educated, the illiterate and innumerate, those whose grasp of the local language is poor. I'm sure the list could be expanded.