National Bank of Denmark sets out payment outage preparedness guidance for households and merchants

The National Bank of Denmark has published an analysis on resilient payments that sets out recommendations for citizens and merchants to keep payments functioning when one or more payment solutions suffer an outage, whether locally and briefly or in longer, nationwide situations. The analysis identifies offline payments with physical payment cards as the primary contingency measure and emphasises preparedness, clear procedures, and the ability to use several payment solutions in practice. For citizens, the recommendations include having at least two physical payment cards from different card brands, keeping a small amount of cash at home (a benchmark of DKK 250 per person in the household), and having a mobile payment solution based on account transfers such as MobilePay or mobile banking. For merchants in physical commerce, the guidance focuses on planning in advance how to handle disruptions, being able to accept offline card payments (via local authorisation or deferred authorisation depending on terminal and acquirer set-up), offering alternative payment options beyond cards and cash where relevant, and ensuring staff know how to activate and operate contingency procedures. Work under the Danish Payments Council is also underway to complete a national contingency solution enabling offline payments for medicine and groceries at pharmacies and nationwide supermarket chains for at least one week, including payments with virtually all cards and card-based wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. The final stores are expected to complete implementation by mid-2026 at the latest, and other merchants can also implement the deferred authorisation solution through agreements with their acquirer and terminal supplier.