Paypal Is About To Get A Bruising From Facebook And Square

Ohad Samet

Apr 9, 2011

Editors note: Guest author Ohad Samet is an expert in managing fraud and other risks in payments systems. He is a cofounder of Signifyd, and years ago was a senior manager at PayPal and blogs at As Risky As It Gets and Tweets at @ohadsamet.

2011 is going to be a big year for payments, with more startups and mature companies getting funded in the space than almost ever before. Its important to make the distinction between the headline chasers, the slow moving giants struggling for a piece of the pie and the companies that have a chance at real disruption. For my money Facebook and Square are both very interesting companies to follow in this space.

In my last post on TechCrunch I discussed Google and Apple and their efforts around payments, and explained why I dont yet think they are serious players for the whole payments pie. The post ended with some ideas around what serious contenders could look like, and who are other potential large companies that could step into user-to-user payments. Id like to expand on that, looking at how the companies above might take advantage of chinks in Paypals armor (disclosure: my consulting company, Analyzd, has done a project with Square in the past).

Paypals Weaknesses

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