Did the wife got kinda upset with them, too? Or did she defend them? My friends and my wife's friends are almost the same, but if someone do something to one of us, the other will take the partner side. We've also had some not "friendly" friends, but we starting avoiding them.
We had friends that always "didn't have money", so we were happy to pay for them (it's normal between our friends), but we started noticing that they were always going out alone to expensive places, so we just started not inviting them...
I think it's more than the payment companies. Because of the globalization, the culture of our world seems each time "less separate", and the west is really vocal about those things, so I'm afraid of even Japan surrendering to it, not because of laws, payment or whatever, but just by sheer pressure and shaming. It maybe won't be "extinct", but it seems it's getting rarer and rarer...