5 ms·

This is a recent situation. Back in the early 00's, paying for something online with a credit card, other than porn, was a novelty. I think things started to ch

by rawbot 5y ago

This is a recent situation. Back in the early 00's, paying for something online with a credit card, other than porn, was a novelty. I think things started to change in the late 00's. I remember a LOT of software being sold online (licenses and such) was sold via money orders or sometimes wire transfers.

thriftwy 5y ago
Travel is what enabled CC payments over the net. Airline/train tickets and hotel accomodations and internet payments are a match.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Why would online retail not also be a match? I assume there is are many more online retail transactions than travel related transactions simply because people shop retail more than they travel.
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    People did not shop online that much, 15 years ago (especially outside USA). But they already had travel booking needs, which could be taken fully online with CC payments over the net. You could often pay upon delivery even when shopping online, but there's no need of delivery for tickets.
    - bluedino 5y ago
      Didn't take long for catalogs and mail order to go away
      - thriftwy 5y ago
        A web site which offers payment-upon-delivery goods is a glorified mail order, anyway. It does not transform the experience much apart from removing some friction.
h2odragon 5y ago
The first time I had a customer lose their credit card merchant acct for political incorrectness was in 1997. They put a goat on stage with a "Clinton" sign on it at an event.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dhosek 5y ago
I was accepting credit cards online from 1994 (although I have to confess now that the business is defunct that the form—which didn't use https(!)—just emailed the entry to me(!)). My first order from Amazon was in 1997 (it was two books: The Psychology of Religion and Varieties of Religious Experience). I bought a number of musical instruments online with credit cards as early as 1998. Buying things from individuals was a bit dicey for a while, with a lot of trust involved where you'd send a check or money order to the seller and hope they'd send the promised merchandise. Paypal did a lot to mitigate that, and I opened my Paypal account in 1999.
- ghaff 5y ago
  That lines up with my recollection. While it was much less widespread than today, credit cards for ordering from a catalog or e-commerce was becoming quite common by the late 1990s but, as you say, for an individual, it was hard to accept credit cards pre-Paypal. (I had a small software business through about the mid-90s and I eventually was able to accept a credit card through a local reseller but it wasn't at all a routine process.)
danachow 5y ago
In the US/Canada and Japan at least, it’s not that recent Perhaps a novelty in the early 90s - even then, the major online services all had online shopping options. Ebay, PayPal, and Amazon were all growing rapidly by 1999, and the dot-com boom was filled with retail shopping startups that were popular - just not profitable or well managed.

by rawbot 5y ago

thriftwy 5y ago

Travel is what enabled CC payments over the net. Airline/train tickets and hotel accomodations and internet payments are a match.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Why would online retail not also be a match? I assume there is are many more online retail transactions than travel related transactions simply because people shop retail more than they travel.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  People did not shop online that much, 15 years ago (especially outside USA). But they already had travel booking needs, which could be taken fully online with CC payments over the net. You could often pay upon delivery even when shopping online, but there's no need of delivery for tickets.
  - bluedino 5y ago
    Didn't take long for catalogs and mail order to go away
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      A web site which offers payment-upon-delivery goods is a glorified mail order, anyway. It does not transform the experience much apart from removing some friction.

h2odragon 5y ago

The first time I had a customer lose their credit card merchant acct for political incorrectness was in 1997. They put a goat on stage with a "Clinton" sign on it at an event.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

dhosek 5y ago

I was accepting credit cards online from 1994 (although I have to confess now that the business is defunct that the form—which didn't use https(!)—just emailed the entry to me(!)). My first order from Amazon was in 1997 (it was two books: The Psychology of Religion and Varieties of Religious Experience). I bought a number of musical instruments online with credit cards as early as 1998. Buying things from individuals was a bit dicey for a while, with a lot of trust involved where you'd send a check or money order to the seller and hope they'd send the promised merchandise. Paypal did a lot to mitigate that, and I opened my Paypal account in 1999.

ghaff 5y ago
That lines up with my recollection. While it was much less widespread than today, credit cards for ordering from a catalog or e-commerce was becoming quite common by the late 1990s but, as you say, for an individual, it was hard to accept credit cards pre-Paypal. (I had a small software business through about the mid-90s and I eventually was able to accept a credit card through a local reseller but it wasn't at all a routine process.)

danachow 5y ago

In the US/Canada and Japan at least, it’s not that recent Perhaps a novelty in the early 90s - even then, the major online services all had online shopping options. Ebay, PayPal, and Amazon were all growing rapidly by 1999, and the dot-com boom was filled with retail shopping startups that were popular - just not profitable or well managed.