Well, I guess I will just die then.
In all seriousness, that happens to people once in a while. There are ways around it. Having cards from different sources is the easiest way.
Identity theft can cause havoc. Having identity theft protections set up before hand usually protects people from that.
And, we haven't gone to a cashless society yet. I don't see it in the near future.
We have lost use of credit and debit cards in the past while on vacation. At the most, it was a temporary inconvenience.
We used to have to call our credit card source and tell them to authorize purchases in the states or countries we would be traveling in before we left. Otherwise, the cards wouldn't work. That system was replaced with fraud detection system that looks and flags suspicious activity on the account. Works pretty well. They've notified us a handful of times of suspicious charges and killed the transactions. Cost us nothing.
Most recent issue we had was last summer. We filled up our Suburban with 30 gallons of gas, paid with our debit card, and headed out towards Oklahoma. 6 hours later, we stopped on the other side of St. Louis and filled it up again, paid with our debit card and kept going. 6 hours after that, we pulled into a gas station in Stillwater, OK, filled it a 3rd time, paid with debit.
Went out to eat the next day, and tried to pay with debit card. It was declined. Why? Because our fraud detection service at our credit union shut it down after seeing three $100+ transactions in a 12 hour period spread across 4 states. Oh no! What are we gonna do?
Paid for food with credit card. Easy peasy.
Called fraud detection service and they released the hold on the debit card immediately.