When everybody in the industry decided the implementation was more trouble than it’s worth. (Offline-capable chips, that is; embossers were 80% solemnization ceremony and 20% data entry aid, just like signatures as "cardholder verification", and are a non-starter from a security perspective.)

The mindset was one of ubiquitous Internet connectivity, which is cheaper than maintaining a complex stored-value or offline limit based solution.

Of course, this assumption does not include some externalities in case of large scale outages, maybe due to cyberattacks…