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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

I was at a gas station in Grand Forks, ND in the middle of winter at 2AM fueling up. I had traveled this route and stopped at this gas station at about the same time of night multiple times when I was going from ND to MN and back. The card (Citibank Visa) had a large open credit line, but it somehow got rejected because (and I quote) "they installed new software"[1]. This was a bit before I had a cellphone and luckily I had taken my Dad's advice and always kept cash hidden in the car. They promised it wouldn't happen again, and I remembered to make sure I had an emergency stash of cash in the car. I have no clue what I would have done if I had to only use that card.

1) I do get a little sick of companies feeling that "software" is a complete explanation for why something has gone wrong.

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I remember as a kid how much money my parents would have to carry while on holiday, banks were closed and ATMs rare and often empty, shops in the country often wouldn't take cheques. Credit cards resulted in really slow vendor payment (remember paper credit card chunk clunk? those numbers are raised for a reason) and caused cash flow issues.

Anyway, one of the major telcos had an outage of their EFT system the last holiday weekend and everything broke. Except for people who had cash. I was quietly smug, but it shows how fragile the payment systems are.

I'm looking forward to a decent Weibo hack to cause a reassessment of the single centralised 'trust our ledger' model.

Its interesting the total difference in how people deal with commerce going from the 70's to today. I remember the get check, deposit check, write checks and maybe go get money from the bank cycle. Heck, even if you had a credit card quite a lot of places wouldn't take it (not to mention the carbon paper).

People trust technology will always work. Its not a bad bet where banks are concerned, but I too worry about the chaos of even a couple of hours down time. I wonder if there will be a push back. There probably would have been except the unbanked can get pre-paid cards and pretty much do everything at Walmart or through PayPal and its competitors.

I remember that too; my grandfather used to go on business trips to NYC, and after adjusting for inflation the amount he carried was almost 5000 USD. Very few people walk around with that amount of cash today.

> Very few people walk around with that amount of cash today.

... because the cops would stop him, insinuate that the money probably had something to do with crime, and then seize it to line their own pockets cough cough I mean "bolster their budgets."

My grandfather was a WASP in a business suit. He's not going to get stop and frisked in NYC.

It's tragic that the unbanked (unable to get credit, often paid in cash, just don't have bank accounts) are the ones most likely stop be stopped by police and subject to unjust forfeiture. (With the exception of the Amish.)

I was able to help out some family members who coincidentally where in same store during a EFT outage. I keep about $200 cash on me just in case. I was able to cover some necessities for them which they paid back next day when systems were back online. Nudged them a bit about not relying 100% on the plastic, esp after banks close.

That said, I wouldn't be carrying large amounts of cash on me in a country with civil forfeiture plus corrupt, police organizations trying to maximize seizure:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/11/civil-asset-forfei...

Good we have a lot of payment options here. :)

I was traveling in the middle of nowhere once, and planned to arrive at a particular gas station before they closed (at 10PM). I was delayed and was low on gas when I pulled into the only gas station for miles around.

It was completely dark, all the lights off, and no one there. But the pumps were active, so I put in my credit card, pumped, paid, and drove off.

So, I for one, am happy credit cards are there :) And that that gas station either forgot to shut off the pumps, or maybe they left them on for locals.

For sure, the credit card at the pump has been an amazing convenience for rural areas. I do love the ability, but it is a pain when the credit card company’s software doesn’t feel you need that convenience.

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