If you’re Canadian, you’re probably experiencing a network outage right now.
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Credit card transactions are generally authorized in real-time. The authorization is what results in the pending charge. At a later time, the settlement process is initiated. This is a batch process whereby the approved authorizations are finalized, pending becomes posted, and funds are exchanged.
Some terminals support an offline, or store & forward mode. This allows payments to be accepted and the encrypted transaction data is stored on the terminal device until network connectivity is restored. At that point, it is forwarded for authorization similar to an online transaction. There is obviously a risk in doing this and some merchant services providers will require additional verifications or transaction limits.
Obviously there’s always the old sliding terminal/carbon copy method too, but I think that’s a given.
There are also offline debit cards but the cards are less common.
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