That's true, but how did Visa and Mastercard come about in the first place, anyway? And could that ever be replicated again? Did they start with a small scope before expanding to be globally accepted?

There are services where you enter your username and password for your bank, and they log into your online banking for you, and make a giro transfer outwards, and they can confirm the transfer was sent because they sent it. Bank security departments don't like this, but they can't always do anything about it.