Waiting for capitalism to reveal a profitable hole in the market is sometimes slow. I'd blame the 5 companies that control 50% of global credit card terminals

Waiting for capitalism to reveal a profitable hole in the market is sometimes slow. I'd blame the 5 companies that control 50% of global credit card terminals that decided to keep things low cost in the US. Much of the blame probably also rests on the 5 banks that issue the majority of the credit & debit cards in the US. In fact I believe the current chip rules are there just to hobble new entrants in the space. Probably 10-20 startups like Square built readers that they provided for free or nearly free and gave millions of units away. Many of these are garbage as a result, and all of the mag readers will be eventually. The chip (with conspicuously missing PIN) legislation was a pretty expensive attack on all of those companies, intentional or not.