Electronic credit card processing was born in the 70s, a few years after the ARPA research project was started and decades before the modern internet was born.

Electronic credit card processing was born in the 70s, a few years after the ARPA research project was started and decades before the modern internet was born. At first it took a five minute phone call to authorize charges, so the infrastructure to support credit cards before commoditized networked computers was substantial. The credit card processing fees have gone down substantially since then with improvements in technology.