All of this comes from not really understanding the merchant and not really understating the consumer. None of the tech companies that have just now (last 2 years) “discovered” retail payments respect or understand history or the wisdom of experience. Thus misunderstanding of true disruption is fed to some of the best people to be found in tech by executives and founders only to wake up with a hangover when reality sets in. The only true disruption in payments is when one replaces Visa, MasterCard and/or the ACH system. No one including PayPal has, thus there is no true disruption.

This is not and will never be a “winner takes all market”. But some companies are acting like it is. This also is foolhardy.

The issue is reaching merchants and all the pay per click, glowing retweets, Facebook wall comments and pointless TV advertisements in the world, will not reach the 90% of merchants that these companies need to reach. Currently all of them are fighting over the same 10% of merchants. A large 10% yes, but not nearly the entire market.

And even if they do reach these notoriously hard merchants to reach, there will have to be considerable understanding from an anthropological and physcological level. This takes time or it take access to people with real direct experience. I know dozens of ways to solve these issues and all are far from obvious. The best picture I can draw at this point is:

As retail Merchants become the only girl in town when the tech company Navy drops anchor and come ashore. All of the sailors are certain they have something new to offer. However the only girl in town, well, she may have seen this all before.

http://www.quora.com/Brian-Roemmele