Mastercard makes offline payments a requirement on all new European cards from February 2027

Mastercard has set new offline payment requirements across its European network. From February 2027 every newly issued Mastercard card in Europe must support offline transactions, followed by new and replacement terminals from May.

During a power or network outage, cardholders will be able to pay with chip and PIN for essentials at supermarkets, pharmacies, service stations and travel and ticket machines, up to €200 per transaction. Spending limits are stored securely on the card's chip, and payments clear once connectivity returns.

The rollout follows live implementations in Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia, and the April 2025 blackout in Spain and Portugal, when an estimated 55 million people could not pay digitally. Brice van de Walle, EVP core payments, said people still need to buy food, fuel and medicine when the network goes down.

The read: offline capability is becoming a resilience baseline, and the ECB has made it a central feature of the digital euro design.