Spanish mobile networks go dark

People across the country are reporting no signal, total blackout and internet issues, while some companies were completely frozen out of their systems and couldn’t load their software or connect their computers.

The glitch, which is affecting all mobile networks across the country, apparently stems from a botched system upgrade at Telefónica, the multinational network operator.

Countries across Europe have been reassessing their dependence on online payment services in the face of geopolitical uncertainty and cyber threats.

Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Estonia are developing offline card payment systems to avoid outages if online services are knocked out. Norway and Denmark have already rollout out offline payments, with Sweden planning to join them by July 2026 and Finland and Estonia also working on systems.

Just yesterday, Sweden's central bank called time on the push for a cashless society by insisting that cash remains central to protecting consumers in the face of increasing security and online threats.

Azimkhon Askarov, co-CEO & partner at Barcelona-based payments company Concryt says the telecoms outage in Spain underscores the growing dependency of digital payments on mobile infrastructure.

"When mobile networks go down, the consequences for the payment ecosystem are immediate: failed transactions, frustrated customers, overwhelmed support teams, and increased chargebacks," he says. "For merchants, this creates not just technical disruption but a real risk to revenue and customer trust. As mobile payments become the default method in many sectors, infrastructure resilience is no longer optional, it’s essential. This event highlights the urgent need for closer coordination between telecoms providers and the broader financial technology ecosystem to ensure service continuity and mitigate future risk.”