You could argue the problem was that it took a system that more-or-less worked offline, and tried to hammer it into working online.
A "built for online first" payment paradigm would look different, but it would have an enormous chicken-egg or installed-base problem, unless you had something with government-level muscle enforcing it.
A "built for online first" payment paradigm would look different, but it would have an enormous chicken-egg or installed-base problem, unless you had something with government-level muscle enforcing it.