Mastercard’s offline mandate is right, but without power the till still goes silent

On 7 October Mastercard announced something that was overdue after the blackout in Spain and Portugal: from 2027, card payments in Europe are meant to keep working even when the network is down. My thesis: the offline mandate is right, but it does not make the till outage-proof as long as power, internet access and merchant contracts fail to keep pace. Now is the time to say so, because from today every terminal sales conversation will feature the word “offline-capable”, and by May 2027 many merchants will buy or rent a device without knowing what that word means when it matters.

What Mastercard actually requires

The rule has two deadlines. From February 2027, all newly issued Mastercard cards in Europe will be offline-capable. From May 2027, all newly installed and all replacement terminals must support the function. If the terminal loses its connection, the chip approves the payment locally, with the PIN verified directly on the card and up to a maximum of 200 euros per payment. The issuing bank sets the exact limit; according to Trending Topics, further counters on the chip cap how often and how much can be paid since the last connection. The terminal stores the payments and submits them once the line is back. The scheme is already live in Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia. The trigger was the power outage of April 2025, when, according to Mastercard, around 55 million people could no longer pay digitally. The details are in our news item on the offline mandate.

Two points will get lost in the debate. According to The Paypers, the risk of a payment approved offline lies with the issuing banks, which is why they set the limit. And Trending Topics soberly states what every technician knows: without power, even an offline-capable terminal does not work.

The objection: this is just a terminal replacement programme

The obvious objection from retailers is that yet another obligation has been invented that mainly benefits device makers and terminal providers. I take that seriously, because that is exactly what happened with the supposed card payment mandate that has been used to sell contracts for years, as I described in September.

Here, however, the objection does not hold. The rule applies only to new and replacement devices. No merchant has to take a working terminal off the counter in May 2027. The mandate grows into the market with the normal replacement cycle, and that cycle is large: according to EURO Kartensysteme, around 1.397 million girocard terminals were active in Germany in mid-2026. Anyone who tells a customer their device has to go by May 2027 because of Mastercard is not telling the truth. I sell card terminals myself, and I consider exactly that sentence the biggest risk of the coming months, for merchants and for my industry’s reputation.

The second objection comes from the other side: 200 euros is too little to keep a supermarket running during a blackout. For a family’s weekly shop that may be tight. For bread, medicine and a tank of fuel it is enough, and that is the point. A higher limit would raise the banks’ risk and reduce their willingness to switch the function on generously in the first place.

Where the real gap lies

The gap is not in the chip but in the shop. A countertop terminal on a mains adapter goes dark in a power cut, whatever the card can do. A terminal that connects via the till’s router loses its connection when the network fails, and then offline approval helps, but only if the device itself has power. Till systems that pass the amount to the terminal also depend on power and network. Anyone who wants an outage-proof checkout therefore needs three things together: a terminal with a battery or backup power, a second connection path and a till that does not lock up in emergency mode. Which form factor delivers what is explained in the guide to terminal form factors.

How much revenue is at stake is shown by this week’s YouGov survey for the Genoverband: 56 per cent of adults were unable to pay cashless as they wanted at least once in 2026, as our news item describes. A customer who turns away because of a dead terminal does not show up in any till statistics. They are simply missing.

Then there is the contract. That banks carry the risk of a payment approved offline is stated in trade reports on the Mastercard rule. In payment providers’ merchant terms it is usually not stated today. And the offline mandate applies to Mastercard. Whether and how girocard, with 4.21 billion payments in the first half of the year, keeps working during an outage is something the merchant does not learn from Mastercard’s announcement.

What I demand

From terminal providers and network operators, including my own trade: retrofit offline capability by software update wherever the hardware allows, and without a surcharge. State openly in the offer whether the device has a battery and how long it lasts in operation. And never use the May 2027 deadline to sell a replacement the rule does not require.

From Mastercard: publish the rules in a form merchants can understand, not just banks and acquirers, and make clear that a payment approved offline in line with the rules will not be charged back to the merchant later.

From the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft and Visa: disclose how girocard and Visa cards work in Germany during an outage, so merchants do not have to guess for each card scheme separately. According to heise, Visa already offers offline functions.

From the legislator, currently deliberating a card acceptance obligation: resilience at the checkout belongs in the same plan. Anyone who pushes merchants to accept cards must also say what applies during a blackout.

And from merchants: with the next terminal contract, get three questions answered in writing. Offline-capable under the new rules? How long does the device run without power? Who is liable for payments approved offline? What a fair contract looks like is set out in the guide Renting or buying a card terminal.

Mastercard has made the chip outage-proof. Whether the shop is too will be decided by the battery, the line and the contract clause, and that is not down to Mastercard but to providers and merchants.