There is some trade-off between efficiency and friendliness, as long as friendliness requires some real human services (which is likely the case for the foresee

There is some trade-off between efficiency and friendliness, as long as friendliness requires some real human services (which is likely the case for the foreseeable future). Of course, there is definitely room to provide more of both, but trade-off exists nonetheless. When a typical merchant signs up for a service, she'd look first for the expenses involved. If a non-free service springs up even with a great customer service, there is little chance they will get enough scale to compete successfully in the long run. As long as most merchants don't have big problems with mostly automated (and less friendly) services like this, Web-based payment services will stick to this free model. That's an issue with this 'free' economy. Nothing is really free. We've collectively given up human customer service to get these 'free' services.