adding pagination to a foreach loop in wordpress

Am looking for a way to implement pagination on my categories I tried to use paginated_links(); functions but it works only for posts, and not the actual categories. I have looked around and it seems this is a little trickier than I was expecting…

    $cats = get_categories(
        array('parent' => $cat->cat_ID)
      );
                // loop through the categries
                foreach ($cats as $cat) {
       
          echo '<div class="card">';
                    // setup the cateogory ID
                    $cat_id= $cat->term_id;
          echo '<div class="card-body">';
          // make images for the category
        
          echo '<div class="card-title"><a href="' . get_category_link($cat->term_id) . '">' . $cat->name . '</a> <i class="fas fa-arrow-right"></i></div>';
          echo '</div>';
                    // create a custom wordpress query
                    query_posts("cat=$cat_id&posts_per_page=3");

                    if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
          <?php echo '<div class="blog-list-points">' ?>
                        <?php // create our link now that the post is setup ?>
            <a href="<?php the_title();?>">
            <?php the_excerpt(); ?>
        <hr>
          </a>
          <?php echo '</div>'?>
                    <?php endwhile; endif; echo ' </div> '// done our wordpress loop. Will start again for each category ?>
            
                <?php } 
        // done the foreach statement ?>