Cyber Threats Spark Iceland Plan to Process Payments at Home
- Iceland faces risk of being cut off if subsea cables break
- Central bank expects to launch new payment solution this year
Iceland wants to ensure payments can be made even if there’s no internet connection out of the country.
Photographer: Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg
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Iceland is creating a domestic payments infrastructure to ensure it can process transactions even if the island is cut off from the rest of the world.
Connected to other countries by four submarine data cables, the North Atlantic nation wants to ensure payments can be made even if there’s no internet connection out of the country. Today, more than 90% of all retail payments go through Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., which process them abroad, according to the central bank.