It burns ablaze in the German payment economy.
There have been serious problems with payment terminals for a few days, so that at many cash registers there is actually only real cash - cards are blocked.
The strategy so far?
Reassure, refer to others and ignite smoke candles.
Nobody can or wants to say where the problem actually lies.
You can no longer justify this with the holiday: That is communicative inability.
One tries to sweep the subject under the table: Why else should the German credit industry first sway and say that it doesn't affect that many devices - only to later claim that they don't even know how many it affects.
But she is in good company.
The manufacturer of the affected terminals communicates as openly as isolated dictatorships in East Asia.
And the payment service providers are simply overwhelmed because they have never faced such a problem.
The retail chains shrug their shoulders.
But many traders don't exactly cover themselves in glory either.
Cardboard signs painted on at the entrance pointing out that you can only pay in cash?
In the meantime, enough days have passed to have set up a parallel payment structure and to train the employees accordingly.
And politicians only smile wearily at the important payment infrastructure.
The whole behavior can be summed up in one word: failure.