It's interesting and informative to watch how different places handle power failures (which where I am in the USA are not common but not entirely rare, either).
Most of the bars keep serving to cash customers, and use paper to make notes for future bookkeeping. Some even start using paper tabs.
Big companies switch to backup generators (Walmart) or immediately cease business (also Walmart, because the card communication failed).
Some smaller ones had no lights to continue to be safe inside, so chased everyone out.
Other ones had enough windows and kept selling on a cash basis, making notes by hand. Some of these could open the cash drawer others couldn't, but made do with what they could.
Which IMO highlights what the money is. It’s a trust bond, nothing more and nothing else.
Paper money isn’t guaranteed to be always accepted. It only takes most governments a one day to say something like “because of <big crisis> we’re no longer accepting <currency> as they’re subject to <something bad>”. Paper money becomes fireplace material in an instant. (Or dystopian scenario - dictator decides that currency transactions can be done only by citizens, all other transactions are void).
What is really weird is this dualism in trust. On one side there’s distrust to government controlled organizations about online money, and on the other there’s trust that government (own or foreign) won’t regulate it into oblivion for some silly reason.
If we get to apocalypse level crisis one is much better off on stocking cigarettes, coffee and chocolate anyway…
It's even more amusing to realize that multiple times in history, paper money has continued to "have value" and be used in exchange even after the government devalued it completely - usually by ceasing to exist.
Most of the bars keep serving to cash customers, and use paper to make notes for future bookkeeping. Some even start using paper tabs.
Big companies switch to backup generators (Walmart) or immediately cease business (also Walmart, because the card communication failed).
Some smaller ones had no lights to continue to be safe inside, so chased everyone out.
Other ones had enough windows and kept selling on a cash basis, making notes by hand. Some of these could open the cash drawer others couldn't, but made do with what they could.