Yep, I agree with almost all of your comment -- especially around the expectation of owning a space and how that's a totally wrong-headed idea.
My disappointment with MasterCard isn't at all that they're entering the space (hey, that should be good for the world). It just feels lame that they gratuitously copied every single minute detail, far beyond what you'd have to copy to build "a MasterCard version of Stripe". They even copied our code sample gists.
But I definitely didn't mean to imply more than that -- some idea that MasterCard shouldn't compete with us, or even that they shouldn't compete with a functionally similar product. On that front, I'm totally cool with it, and may the best product win :-).
My disappointment with MasterCard isn't at all that they're entering the space (hey, that should be good for the world). It just feels lame that they gratuitously copied every single minute detail, far beyond what you'd have to copy to build "a MasterCard version of Stripe". They even copied our code sample gists.
But I definitely didn't mean to imply more than that -- some idea that MasterCard shouldn't compete with us, or even that they shouldn't compete with a functionally similar product. On that front, I'm totally cool with it, and may the best product win :-).