Mastercard mandates offline payments across Europe: new cards from February 2027, new and replacement terminals from May 2027

Mastercard announced on 8 October 2026 new Europe-wide requirements for offline card payments. From February 2027 every newly issued Mastercard card in Europe must be enabled for offline payments, and by May 2027 all newly installed and replacement point-of-sale terminals must accept them. Offline approval is made locally against a spending limit held on the card chip, capped at EUR 200 per transaction and set in advance by the cardholder's bank, with clearing submitted once connectivity returns.

Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia already run the capability. Brice van de Walle, Mastercard EVP of core payments, framed it around outages: 'When the power or network goes down, people still need to buy food, fuel and medicine.'

This is a scheme mandate with hard dates that reaches the whole European acceptance estate, not a product launch. Every issuer has a February 2027 card-production deadline, and from May 2027 offline capability becomes a procurement requirement for terminal makers, acquirers and PSPs selling new or replacement devices. It follows the April 2025 Iberian blackout, which left an estimated 55 million people unable to pay digitally, and it turns payment resilience from a national pilot into a continent-wide acceptance baseline. The caveat is real: the standard only keeps a lane open if the terminal itself still has power.

Whether Visa follows with a matching mandate, how terminal vendors and acquirers price the certification and replacement cycle into 2027 contracts, and whether the EUR 200 ceiling and bank-set limits hold as national regulators look at resilience obligations.

• electronicpaymentsinternational.com
• Mastercard newsroom (primary release, 8 Oct 2026)
• heise online, 9 Oct 2026 (confirms 8 Oct announcement date)
• The Paypers, 9 Oct 2026