A drone view of destruction caused by Typhoon Kalmaegi in Cebu City, Philippines, in November. Millions of people lost electricity, internet access and mobile connectivity due to the storm.Eloisa Lopez/Reuters

Yvonne Su is an associate professor at York University and a visiting scientist at Harvard University.

Many Filipinos abroad trying to send life-saving money home amid two back-to-back typhoons encountered error messages, frozen apps, and agonizing uncertainty about whether their families would receive the funds. Kalmaegi and Fung-wong didn’t just level homes and cut off entire regions last month – they exposed the fragile truth behind the push toward a fully digital financial system: When the power goes out, your money effectively disappears.

In the hardest-hit provinces, millions of people lost electricity, internet access and mobile connectivity. Point-of-sale machines flickered off. ATMs froze. E-wallets, used by the majority of Filipinos, became useless icons on dead phone screens. The timing could not have been worse as roads were flooded, drinking water was scarce, and storms had wiped out most of the food supplies. People had money; some had lots of it. They just had no way to spend it.

This is the unspoken risk of a cashless economy. The more we rely on digital payments, the more a hurricane, heat wave, or grid failure becomes not just an environmental disaster but a........

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