There isn't enough detail for me to know how serious is was in regards to stores not being able to accept payments, but a date of this blog being 2010, and it being written about a time when every megabyte of filesize matters makes me think it was possibly much earlier, like maybe 2001-2005. If that's the case, maybe not being able to process cards wasn't as big of a deal as it would be today because you could likely assume most if not all customers could pay with cash if card payments were down.