On Friday, when the CrowdStrike update brought down millions of Microsoft systems around the world, many businesses were faced with a choice: switch to cash-only payments or close their doors until systems were restored.
This quickly caused chaos in Australia, whose government clearly encouraged companies switch to cashless payments. Photos posted on social media showed card-only self-checkouts at Coles grocery chain displaying blue screens of death. Queues for human checkouts at Australian grocery stores stretched to the back of the storeaccording to local media. Some Australian fairs they just closed the door.
Meanwhile, as per social media reports, some Indian airlines had to handwritten problem boarding passes to those whose flights were scheduled for Friday. In the US, a wide range of companies, including Norfolk Tides minor league baseball team, public swimming pools in Allegheny County, Pennsylvaniaand Film Forum Cinema in New Yorkannounced that until further notice it will only be possible to pay in cash.
Starbucks — whose then-CEO said in 2020 that the company was changing “Towards more cashless experiences“—appears to have been hit particularly hard. One Starbucks employee from Kansas posted TikTok showing that the mobile ordering system was “completely down.” The machine the store uses to print cup labels was also down. “It comes out empty every time,” she said, pointing to the label printer. She tells WIRED that some customers were “upset and very rude” when she tried to explain it. Another Starbucks employee he said on TikTok that she had to write down every order on sticky notes.
Starbucks is further fueling the chaos I had a deal on a $3 drink on Friday for loyalty members (at least in the U.S.). One Florida Starbucks employee told WIRED that the situation made Friday, an “extremely busy” day of the week under normal circumstances, even more stressful. While most people were understanding, he says, “there were a few frustrated people out there” when the store had to close its indoor food court and focus on the drive-through.
Richard Forno, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Maryland, tells WIRED that Friday’s outage highlights the vulnerability of our current cloud and internet infrastructure. “Software supply chains have long been a major cybersecurity concern and potential single point of failure,” Forno says. “Given today’s events, with any luck, the world may finally be waking up to the fact that our modern information-driven and often cloud-based society is built on a very fragile foundation that is not built with security or resilience in mind.” (A Microsoft spokesperson did not immediately respond to that assessment.)
In 2020 it was an increase in the number of companies going cashless in response to the pandemic that disrupted circulation physical money. However, ACLU warns that cashless stores enable consumer surveillance and have a disproportionate impact on low-income customers who less likely to have a bank account AND more inclined to use cashThis is partly what caused Philadelphia, San FranciscoAND New York pass a law that makes completely cashless business activity illegal.