[neokrish]

Absolutely incorrect. If it was that easy, things would've changed long back and you would've named more companies than MasterCard / Visa. One simple logical case in point - MasterCard and Visa have such a strong investment in their infrastructure, there are multiple levels of redundancies built in to such a degree that you never hear Mastercard or Visa networks going down. Try doing that for any other firm. Why, just this morning, there was another thread on HN about a game developer suing a service provider for not keeping their systems online. What this enormous investment in infrastructure offers is 'trust'. Trust to financial institutions, merchants and customers. See Dwolla and Rupay as examples of alternative interchanges (Dwolla isn't one, but is trying to disrupt ACH and is similar in spirit). See if they can scale and promise that to the whole world payment traffic. Lastly, talk to anyone entrenched in business about payments and they'll refer to MasterCard and Visa as 'rails'. That's for a reason.

[MichaelBurge]

What about all the new mobile payment services? Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, the Walmart one?

I don't use any of them - I have a prepaid cell phone that lays on my desk 100% of the time, and is for emergency purposes only - but even if they were backed by Visa or MasterCard, it seems like they could be backed by a checking account just as easily.

Visa or MasterCard have value from inertia(all the work they did getting everybody to sign up for their cards), from their relationships with the banks(the banks tried and failed to do the same thing), from their ability to process payments worldwide, and from their infrastructure.

It's not clear to me what prevents Google from taking over if Visa started abusing its power. They have the inertia(everyone has a cell phone, though not the habit of paying with it), they have the infrastructure, I think cell phones work internationally, and they're big enough to develop a relationship with any bank.

To be clear, Visa and MasterCard are going to be extremely difficult to replace in the 'plastic payment cards' business no matter what they do. But not the more general 'electronic payment methods tied to bank services' business.

[andrewaylett]

At least the first two on your list still use Visa or MasterCard under the hood, and still use the same infrastructure as paying with your generic NFC payment card -- and while I'm sure there are other companies providing such services, in practice I don't think I've seen an NFC payment card that wasn't Visa.

The issue here isn't so much getting the kit into the hands of the consumers, as into the hands of the retailers: if they can't use the infrastructure they already have, you'll have real difficulty getting any traction. See Also: Powa, which for all its other failings still had the over-arching failing that they were trying to facilitate two-sided transactions without having anyone on either side.

[Eridrus]

You say inertia, I say network effects. The fact that network effects arise naturally doesn't mean we should be ok with those barriers to competition.

The fact that Apple/Google/Samsung have failed to make a serious dent should be a good indication that there are real barriers to entry.