The Fragility of Digital Payments: Lessons from Major IT Outages and the Irreplaceable Role of Cash

The digitalisation of payments offers speed, convenience, and global reach. Yet, this transformation comes with additional vulnerabilities—chief among them, the risk of outages that can paralyze payment systems.

Recent high-profile IT failures, including Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) crash in October 2025, Spain’s banking IT outage in June 2025, and the global CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor outage in July 2024, have exposed the fragility of digital payment infrastructure. These incidents underscore the irreplaceable role of cash as a backup when digital payments fail.

The AWS outage: a global wake-up call

On 21 October 2025, AWS, the world’s largest cloud provider, experienced a major outage that disrupted services for thousands of businesses globally, including banks, payment processors, fintech platforms, and e-commerce sites.

AWS’s cloud infrastructure underpins many digital payment systems, and its failure caused widespread transaction failures, delayed settlements, and service disruptions. The outage highlighted the risks of over-reliance on a single cloud provider and the fragility of cloud- dependent financial infrastructure.