The Produce Palace, a retailer in Michigan, brought the first millennium-bug case to court earlier this year, suing the makers of its sales terminals because the terminals cannot handle credit cards that expire after 1999.

ECONOMIST: Please panic early

Berg Insight reports that the number of point of sales terminals will grow from 4 million at the end of 2011 to 43 million by 2017, with 86% of U.S. merchants accepting NFC based payments.

FORBES: Will Visa And MasterCard Capitalize On Mobile Wallet Technology?

As the new century approaches, this has forced many of them to go from expiration after three years to expiration after two. (Visa and Mastercard say they have fixed their own systems, but plenty of sales terminals may still cause trouble.) Meanwhile, Hartford Insurance had to start fixing its systems as far back as 1988, when it realized that its 7-year bonds would crash its software from 1993 onwards.

ECONOMIST: Please panic early