WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT’S SUDDENLY ILLEGAL TO MOVE MONEY OUT OF YOUR COUNTRY? Basic Internet services disappear.

Just as individual Greeks are losing access to Apple’s iCloud, as the Athens staff of Bloomberg News recently discovered, so companies are finding themselves cut off from services critical to their ongoing operations.

The problem demonstrates a hidden risk in today’s otherwise efficient vertical disintegration. Taking for granted the easy flow of money across borders, system designers never foresaw a situation in which companies with adequate funds would find that they couldn’t pay foreign vendors.

“Greek companies are not able at this moment to pay for hosting (Amazon), storage (Dropbox), email services (MailChimp) and many other services,” says Jon Vlachogiannis, a Bay Area entrepreneur, in an email. Without these services, otherwise viable businesses are in trouble.

Vlachogiannis and other expats are stepping up to pay the bills from California, rescuing companies with astonishingly small amounts.