3 ms·

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

by 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.)