I remember many years ago talking with one of the early investors in Stripe. He told me that Stripe built a PSP/PF platform and their target market was Developers. My initial reaction was, “another gateway”, as there were already so many on the market. Companies were already building on top of Vantiv and Wells Fargo. In retrospect, I was so wrong.
However, Stripe did something remarkably different. By targeting Developers, they realized that Developers were the decision makers most of the time when a business owner asks them to “setup payment processing for me”. With Stripe, developers were now able to setup the account within a few hours, instead of the traditional multi-stage multi-day application process through the traditional players like PayPal, Braintree, Moneris, Chase… This revolutionized the online payment processing world…. and it’s now going offline.
Read more here: https://www.recode.net/2018/9/17/17855730/stripe-terminal-brick-and-mortar-payments-adyen-square