Mal,I like that you're contrarian and you're making an effort to...

Mal,

I like that you're contrarian and you're making an effort to read up on payments. It is good to have people go against the grain.

What we're talking about here is Economics 101 - basic supply & demand.

Small merchants want an inexpensive and simple way of being able to accept payments. That's what Mint, Square etc, etc are providing. The massive growth in smart phones has allowed them new ways to accept payments.

Merchants have smart phones - check
Customers have cards - check

Do merchants have smart phones which can accept NFC? Maybe, but probably not.
Do customers have smart phones which can use NFC? Maybe, but probably not.

I'm not saying NFC isn't cool or sexy. I'm not saying digital remission of payments isn't cool or sexy. But the back end infrastructure to enable this is huge. All parties (telcos, banks, schemes, customers) have to be on board. That article you mentioned points this our - they're trying to standardize things. Will it happen, in time? Maybe.

For me - making things easier for people is the goal. Look at the success stories today:

Tesla - making electric cars gorgeous and affordable
Apple - amazingly beautiful computers with a great eco system
Paypal - made it ever so easy to send and accept payments online
Square - make it incredibly easy to make payments in the real world

The latter is what Mint is going after. Make payments easy. Simple.

Is Mint overvalued today? Probably. Is it overvalued for tomorrow? Maybe not IF they can start kicking some goals. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.