When the internet goes down: how to keep selling

It is Saturday evening, every table is full, and the internet stops working. The guests are already eating, and soon they will want to pay.

An outage is much easier when you know beforehand what keeps working, what needs a connection, and what the staff do. This guide is as of October 2026.

Why card payments in Iceland depend on the internet

Cards are by far the most common way to pay in Iceland. In a report from February 2023, Seðlabanki Íslands (the Central Bank of Iceland) said that more than 90 % of domestic small payments are made by debit or credit card through foreign infrastructure. About 99 % of debit card payments go through systems owned by foreign companies.¹

The same report names the risks: a lost network connection, a power cut, a cyberattack or a business or political dispute. It also says that notes and coins are the fallback when card systems stop, although few people carry cash today.¹

For a restaurant, this means that a card terminal must reach the acquirer to approve a card. When the terminal has no connection, it cannot approve the payment in the normal way.

What a POS can do without internet

POS systems differ a lot here. Some keep working on the device and send the records later. Others need the internet for every order. Ask your vendor exactly what happens to each of these:

• Taking orders and sending them to the kitchen.
• Printing kitchen tickets and receipts.
• Splitting checks, giving discounts and taking cash.
• Orders on other devices, such as a kitchen display or a second POS.
• Sales reports and the end-of-day settlement.
• Card payments on the terminal.

How Resto works offline

The Resto POS keeps everything on the device. Staff keep taking orders, splitting checks, giving discounts and taking cash. Kitchen tickets and receipts print over the local network or Bluetooth, so the kitchen gets new orders on paper as usual.

Some things wait for the connection. Orders already on a kitchen display stay there, but new orders reach other devices when the connection returns. The owner sees sales up to the outage in the back office, and the rest shows when the devices are back online. Close the day after every device is online again, so that the settlement includes all of the day’s sales. Read more about Resto without internet.

Card payments need a connection unless the terminal has its own 4G connection, which is described in the next section.

Card payments during an outage

There are three ways to take a card when the restaurant’s internet is down.

A terminal with its own mobile connection

Some card terminals have a SIM card and switch to 4G when the restaurant’s internet drops. For the guest, the payment works as usual. This is the simplest protection when only your own internet is down. It does not help when the mobile network or the card systems themselves are down.

A terminal that stores the payment

Some acquirers let the terminal store a card payment and send it later. A maximum amount applies. The restaurant carries the risk if the card is declined when the payment is sent. Ask your acquirer if your contract allows this and what the limit is.

The national offline card solution

Seðlabanki Íslands has worked with Icelandic card issuers and acquirers on a solution for card payments without a connection. The bank announced it on 3 June 2026.² Under the solution, an adult can pay up to 50.000 kr. with each Icelandic card during an outage, when these conditions are met:²

• The guest pays with the physical card, not with a phone or a watch.
• The guest inserts the card into the terminal and enters the PIN.
• The payment is for essential goods, which the bank defines as groceries, fuel or medicine.

Card issuers can give a higher limit to some cards and allow other kinds of purchases.² The cardholder activates a card by paying once with the card inserted and the PIN entered. Cards issued from 1 July 2026 need no activation. The rollout began in July 2026.⁴ When the bank announced the solution, it said that some service providers might need more time to put it in place.² Some terminals may not support it yet.

Two points matter for restaurants. A restaurant meal is not on the bank’s list of essential goods, so whether a card works offline at your restaurant depends on the card issuer. The bank describes the solution for cards from Icelandic issuers, so do not count on it for a tourist’s card. Ask your acquirer if your terminal supports the solution and which payments it will accept at your restaurant.

The Financial Stability Committee of the bank calls offline card payments an important part of resilient payments in Iceland.³ Contactless payments, for example with a phone or a watch, do not work offline yet. The bank is still developing the solution for them.²⁴

Prepare before it happens

Most of this plan takes an hour on a quiet afternoon. Do it once, and check it again before the busy season or a festival.

1. Find out what your POS does offline. On a quiet day, unplug the internet cable from the router and take a test order. See what prints and what waits.
2. Ask your acquirer three questions. Does the terminal have 4G? Can it store payments, and up to what amount? Does it support the national offline solution?
3. Keep a cash float. Have enough change for an evening, and make sure that the staff know where it is.
4. Plan for bank transfers. Guests can often pay with a transfer from their banking app on their own mobile data. Print your account number and kennitala on a card at the counter. Agree with your accountant how staff record a transfer on the POS.
5. Keep a phone hotspot in mind. If your terminal connects over Wi-Fi, a staff phone with a hotspot can sometimes bring it back online. Test this before you rely on it.
6. Protect against power cuts. Tablets and phones run on battery, but the router and the printers need power. A small backup battery (UPS) keeps them running for a while.
7. Tell the staff the plan. Write the steps on one page and keep it next to the POS. Include who to call at your internet provider and at your acquirer.

When the internet is down, a calm sentence to each table helps: “Our card terminal is offline at the moment. You can pay by cash or by transfer, or we can keep your check open until the terminal is back.”

After the outage

When the connection returns, check that every device is back online before you close the day. Look at the card terminal report for any stored payments, and check that they went through. Keep a short note of what happened and what you would do differently next time.