As someone who does a fair bit of work in networking fields, I think that's a pessimistic view. Most people don't see when the underlying infrastructure develop

As someone who does a fair bit of work in networking fields, I think that's a pessimistic view. Most people don't see when the underlying infrastructure develops, in no small part because the standards and compatibility issues are so carefully considered, but that doesn't mean there aren't newer standards and protocols being developed all the time. We're now on something like the fifth mainstream WiFi standard, for example, and while someone buying a new laptop of getting a new box from their ISP might not know what all the 802.whatever markings mean, they still experience much faster speed and higher reliability compared to the earlier technology. An example from much further up the stack is that we're starting to see wider support for Web serving using HTTP/2, which is a big change from its predecessor. Even with payment systems, we've seen multiple contactless payment technologies become established very rapidly in recent years, and developments like Chip-and-PIN cards a few years before that. Of course online payment processing is also a much more developed and competitive industry today than it was even five years ago, which again is partly because both the technical and the regulatory frameworks have opened up in recent years. SEPA in Europe is a good example here.