[jmacd]

I think those are good points and valid, but Twilio definitly had equivalent arguments in their own product.

Encumbents manage scale very very well and historically they tend to come to a market late. While Stripe is rushing up the value chain, the issuers are just slowly lumbering around.

Billing, Radar, Sigma, Connect are all very well built products which drive usage of their core revenue generator. I suspect the revenue mix at Stripe is still largely payment processing. Voice minutes and SMSs on a carriers network, or authorizations and settlements on an issuer network.

I am not saying Stripe is doomed, far from it, but it's a non trival problem to solve over the long term and the default state is attrition. I think Twilio is a very good example of how difficult this can be.