Mobile/Micro payments. There is still no friction free solution, where I would be sure, my mother could use it.
Another problem may have been this. If everyone on the internet agreed that say, watching a video should cost $0.02/minute, then people would get accustomed to paying this amount because that's such a small cost. But it's only a $0.02 decision for a content creator to restrict or allow it to be watched for free, and if say, 5% of artists just decided to "eat" the potenential earnings, then you'd have 5% of free videos and 95% premium videos. The 5% free videos would prevent the 95% of videos from being watched, because why would anyone pay to watch a video if you can watch another one for free. Basically I'm saying that this idealization of micropayment content is destroyed by free content, whether that is a good thing or not. I do this myself with respect to Android apps, since I don't take my time seriously enough to pay the occassional $1 per app.
So, the financial system is 'behind' the crapy payment scheme.
Something would have to come along to basically offer credit without all that.
I'm mostly surprised that Amazon and/or Wallmart have not simply done that.
I'll bet Bezos does some day: a low-interest rate 'Amazon Card' that other merchants can use, credit provided by Amazon (not banks), and it's 0% payment for other merchants.
A credit card alternative from Amazon would be fantastic competitor to VISA / MasterCard to break the lack of innovation in the personal finance industry.
Most people don't like having to keep a separate current amount in PayPal to buy stuff.
Also - I'm not sure if the merchant fees that PayPal charges are any less, i.e. they didn't take the 'no fees' angle for the merchants.
And of course there is the consumer benefit: even if a system only charged 0% to merchants, and not 2-3%, well, consumers don't care. So getting enough consumers to sign up is hard.
VISA / AMEX prevent merchants from advertising cheaper prices for use of other cards - so even if a merchant had a 0% processor option, they're not allowed to discount by 2-3% for that card vis-a-vis VISA / AMEX.
It's a tightly controlled oligarchy. It's huge, entrenched, it's entire consumer financial system. Going after it would be economic thermonuclear war.
A disruptor will have to come from an outside angle - or - be huge and have their own base.
So I can see Amazon just 'doing it' themselves, for their own customer base, which equals a critical mass.
Or - someone does something 'online' that shakes things up, and that bleeds over into the brick and mortar. A crypto-currency ... I can see doing that in some way.
At brick and mortars, where they are operating on 5% margins in many cases, a 3% skim off the top is massive.
A 3% arbitrary fee for every electronic payment in north America is really, really quite a huge thing.
It's quite massive form of rent extraction, given that there is no real IP, and the actual cost is almost nothing.
It's one of the biggest and juiciest forms of obvious oligarchy/monopoly that there is.
Several friends living in China tell me cash is basically embarrassing at this point. You'll be laughed at if you try to use cash (note: I'm taking their word for it)
I can buy coffee at a vending machine in my Uni computer lab without cash money by waving my NFC enabled phone at it.