Battery backups and diesel generators at the interchange, both of which are only temporary. Batteries need to be charged and diesel needs to be pumped, and while you can (and most infrastructure resiliency relies on it) operate these systems on manual power, the stability of large infrastructure systems becomes quite vulnerable once it’s necessary to run a diesel generator to pump diesel for your other diesel generators.

They absolutely do not. They just don’t require power locally, but there’s 48v on the line that needs to be generated somewhere.

Basically, the US banking system is made up of many smaller banks, unlike most other countries where there are fewer, larger banks.

This coupled with a large land mass with high population makes it more difficult to make the expensive infrastructure upgrades necessary for modern banking innovations like tap to pay and the loss of the need for physical signatures.

Many of these innovations are only making it to the US now because of larger foreign banks entering the US market, as well as the plummeting costs of technology.