Something we take for granted in the West hit Shanghai as their debit card system collapsed.

City's bank card system collapses

SHANGHAI'S major department stores, restaurants and some automatic teller machines failed to accept bank cards since noon today because of a network breakdown at China Unionpay, the country's integrated system for bank cards transactions.

While the card base is enormous, the ATM base is smaller than I'd expect.

China has issued more than 920 million bank cards, including debit
cards and credit cards since the end of last year, up 142 percent from
2002, the year when China Unionpay was set up.There are 86,000 automatic teller machines and 406,000 point of sales machines in the country so far.

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