>It's one reason it's a good idea to always have some cash at home.
Most places are so dependent upon electricity that they can't even take cash during a blackout. And they don't even have the mechanical machines to take a credit card imprint anymore.
The last of my raised number credit cards went away last month. Those old machines will only get a blank rectangle from me. Sad, because I did actually use one of those about 3 years ago when a rural gas station had power but no network.
Network is not required for mag-strip or emv operations, but the terminal has to be configured accordingly (and has to have some way to send batch of transactions for settling). It's less common now, but fully supported.
Most places are so dependent upon electricity that they can't even take cash during a blackout. And they don't even have the mechanical machines to take a credit card imprint anymore.