Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-24772070-20170127232129/@comment-81.135.238.151-20170208180528

Maybe the Lien value is encoded into the card's strip. When you swipe it, it re-writes the strip to deduct the money. You can swipe the card to pay some of its value into an account electronically or just hand it over to pay what remains of its encoded value.

I know it sounds stupid, but it's the only way I can think to make sense of what they're doing. As for the economy collapsing with CCTS down, I think that's probbably happening.