It isn't just for infra failure. When your credit card provider cuts you off for "unusual activity" that they won't go into detail about, and you realise they are free to refuse you business as they feel like - you'll appreciate cash while rushing to find a new provider as existing debts still loom.
I'm not even sure if it's possible to pay most bills in cash in my country. I have had a bank account frozen due to identity theft; it took me less than 10 minutes to open a new account and get a new debit card in my Google Wallet. The bank transferred my funds within a couple of hours and all of my recurring payments were automatically switched within a couple of days.
Maybe my experiences are atypical, but my impression is that consumer banking in the US is quite dysfunctional.
Again, I don't know what the situation is in the US, but over here it's a privilege available to anyone with a recognised form of ID issued by any EU member state. If you don't have that ID you'll have to go into a branch, but you have the legal right to a bank account, even if you have no home address, even if you've been made bankrupt, even if you don't have the legal right to be in the country.
Your experience could be done here in the US as well. Doing a transfer within the same bank is usually pretty instant. I could get a new account at my bank and a digital card to add to Google Wallet in a similar timeframe.
As someone who lived in Thailand for two years and experienced the joy of scanning a QR code on a postcard to pay a power bill, your experiences are not atypical: the U.S. is behind the curve here.
I’ve actually run into this more with debit/cash accounts than with credit cards. I’ve had checking accounts frozen, but I’ve never had a credit card entirely suspended for “unusual activity”. At worst they’ve declined individual charges until I called, or I just switched to a different card, since it’s easy to have many redundant credit cards.
For travel, etc. it's absolutely a good idea to have multiple redundant cards (that aren't issued by the same bank). I haven't had issues for years, but I have had issues in the past and it's a lot easier to just pull out a different card than deal with international calls trying to get a problem resolved on the spot.
I have CCs suspended all the time, requiring verification (often steam purchases..). In this case I'm talking about the entire account, and linked CCs, suspended for activity - all incoming payments, card payments and direct debits suspended.
I couldn't use my card a few months ago because of accumulated tarnish. All caused by penny pinchers abandoning gold plated contacts. In a paperliess socciety, the lack of erasers may be our ultimate downfall.
