Today, we ran into yet another payment problem at one of our online stores: a customer couldn’t pay for their purchase by card. It turned out to be related to the fighting—someone had apparently blown up one of the data centers, most likely the one used by this payment service.

As always in these situations, we offered the customer the option to pay in crypto, and, almost as always, they had no idea how it worked.

Years go by, and nothing changes.

This year, I’ve already encountered tourists three times who asked how they could withdraw money from their cards—the ATM wasn’t dispensing any cash, you see. It happened in three different countries, and in every case the answer was pretty much the same: “There’s no way with your card.” Oh, those blank, bewildered, questioning eyes… What are we supposed to do…

And yet, in all those countries, it was easy to cash out crypto—there are plenty of physical exchange offices. Just walk in, transfer your USDT to either a fresh crypto address or your Binance account, and get local cash.

Remarkably careless behavior. Traveling abroad without knowing how to handle your money. Especially these days.

P.S. The payment service was fixed successfully a couple of hours later, and the customer paid for everything.