[cookiecaper]

I'm excited to give Braintree a go someday, but what I really wish is that someone would come up with a system that was orthogonal to and independent of the existing banking system.

The banks and the regulations make all real credit card processing a major PITA, and while Braintree eases the process, they are not an exception as far as I can tell. They still have to underwrite and they still have to vet accounts for underwriting. If you have bad credit or anything else that would prevent you from getting a loan, you're not going to be able to process cards without PayPal, which means it's difficult to bootstrap yourself out of a bad situation.

One of the main reasons I think Bitcoin is cool is because it's a great experimental platform for this kind of stuff.

[alexjawad]

True, banking fees really do take up a significant post in the P/L, and the smaller you are, the more you're paying, why it's not optimal for startups. A startup bank would be a cool idea.