What happens when the bank crashes?

This last Friday PayPal began experiencing intermittent problems. I'm surprised that the press didn't get wind of it (at least I didn't read about it). How I did hear about it was when a customer called me because he was trying to purchase the Product Manager's Toolkit from from our website and the "Buy it now" button wasn't working.

The PayPal website explained that they had upgraded their software and that all appeared to be fine at first, but then they experienced intermittent and then more frequent problems. This was four days ago.

So what happens in the future as more and more businesses rely on net-based payment schemes and infrastructure? I wonder what the cost per minute in terms of lost revenues is for PayPal (and for eBay, who must have suffered as well). And if there is a major catastrophe, will the President declare the Internet a disaster zone and provide relief and assistance for the millions of small (and large) businesses who lose days or weeks of revenue?