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3 years, $300M acquisition.

As noted below, there was quite a bit of investment in the company. Breaking into the retail payment processing industry is definitely not an easy task. Still, the relatively quick acquisition shows there is value to be had by taking on the incumbents. Perhaps a more capital-efficient indirect assault on the sector would be possible.

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This is a venture with high capital requirements and significant regulatory and competitive barriers. If it were the sort of thing that a couple of hackers could tackle effectively, we wouldn't be paying such a large fraction of all retail transactions to a handful of companies who succeeded at setting up payment networks in the 80s.

Don't take that as discouragement -- you should go at them, right now. Just pick partners that know the payments industry, can negotiate the regulatory issues, and can raise and spend the money you need to market a consumer product that won't be profitable until it has reached very large scale.

More than $100 million was invested in the company over those 3 years.

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