Well, I guess it had to happen.

I was travelling down a freeway with less that 50 Kms of fuel in the tank and I had about 50 Kms to go to get home and no other fuel outlet before then.  I pulled into the last service station before home to fill up with petrol.

The signs at the pump said it all “Cash only sale, payment network is down”!

I had a choice – do I head off without fuel or do I put in sufficient fuel to get me home?  I took the pragmatic latter path.  So I got the petrol, and moved to the ATM to get the requisite cash to pay for the fuel.  I had filled up exactly $60 and took the $60 from the ATM and then approached the cashier, threw the $60 on the counter and checked that this was the amount expected and left without any further word.

The result was the $60 of fuel cost me $62.50 due to the ATM fees.  Cash is cheaper?  I do not think so!

I was not happy … but it caused me to think.  Why was the ATM network operating and not the POS systems network?  (different networks presumably, or more likely the merchant bank’s networks were down and not the stand alone ATM network, serviced by a different bank).  So the deeper question really is why, in this day and age, are we reliant on terrestrial networks and not the cloud?   Why do we still expect the phone companies to deliver terrestrial services when those same phone companies also support cloud based services?  Odd?  Certainly.

There is a company in the UK called Droplet (dropletpay.com) that provides cloud based payment services linked to geolocation.  You go into the store, the till system sees you, recognises your photo and automatically charges your card when you leave the store.  And clocks up reward points as you leave!  How good is that?  No network downtime as this is all done through the cloud.  And it is available now.

Not hard to get happy with value added services that help not hinder  the customer, is it? Roll on the 21st century is what I say.  Are we there yet?  Clearly not in some parts of the retail world.