Crypto couldn't work back then due to high transaction fees and the delay until the transaction is permanent.
With Bitcoin, it costs (or used to cost) more than a few dollars to make a transaction because the transactions are "bundled" and "attached" to the chain, which happens once every 10 minutes for bitcoin. So the more you pay in transaction fees, the higher priority your transaction will get and be put in blockchain faster.
For Ethereum, it's every 14 seconds these days but they moved to other validation methods with which there's a chance to have much lower transaction costs and "transaction complete" times.
Besides cost of the transaction, there's also the time necessary to have the transaction permanent - if you want to make sure the transaction is permanent and can't be reverted, it was recommended to wait at least 2-3 blocks to be added to the chain.
In the case of Ethereum, I had companies that waited up to 5 minutes after my transaction was added to the blockchain (me transferring ethereum to them) and only then after a bunch of blocks were added after the block with my transaction, they considered the transaction complete.
One can also send a transaction with such low transaction fee (gas in the case of ethereum) that would expire, never picked up to be bundled in blocks and added to chain, because other transactions had higher priority. So you may see on their phone that the payment is initiated, but you can't trust it until the transaction is actually on the blockchain and even then there's a risk of reversal for a few minutes.
So if you're at a store and want a chewing gum or a bottle of milk, they're not gonna be willing to take your ethereum transaction and wait 1m or so until the transaction is guaranteed.
With ethereum going stake proof, it would be possible for those 14s until validation to go much lower, to like 2-5 seconds, maybe even less.
I could see crypto transactions working through a known payment processor - apple pay or ... i don't want paypal but they could do it - such services would be able to guarantee to shops that transactions would go through..
Cashapp is something typical american otherwise. ... Here in Romania every bank has online services and free transfer between cards of same bank , I can do it from my phone app or regular website and even between different banks. I pay for my lunch every day by transferring 10-15$ to a colleague who goes to a store to buy food, by transferring money though my bank's app for no fees.
For people that aren't using the same bank, I just need the name of the person and the IBAN code and transfer fees are usually like 50 cents to a dollar / euro between banks, and usually next day in the morning you have the money in your account.