Since when does EFTPOS work offline? It works off the internet, but not "offline", if the phones are down, EFTPOS is down. It happens with relative frequency, given the weather. Or trucks hitting boxes, or diggers cutting cables. Shit happens.
Regarding places not accepting cash: NZ First (political party) is proposing to protect the right to use cash and make all businesses accept cash for up to $500 items.
> The Cash Transactions Protection Bill would mandate businesses in trade accept cash payment for goods valued up to $500.
Since always. EFTPOS was designed with offline support (signed receipts) as an emergency fallback when the network is down. It’s been like that since the 90s, I know because I’ve been using EFTPOS since then and experienced many outages.
It is capped at $300 per card used and 200 transactions stored (I believe some large merchants can vary this, but not by much), it’s only for temporary failures not multi-hour outages.
You can quickly find information with your favourite search engine.
Regarding places not accepting cash: NZ First (political party) is proposing to protect the right to use cash and make all businesses accept cash for up to $500 items.
> The Cash Transactions Protection Bill would mandate businesses in trade accept cash payment for goods valued up to $500.