I think you underestimate the disruptive potential that Stripe gives. Dealing with payments is one of the biggest pain points that a lot of people have when putting together a new web venture. They've uncomplicated the payment part of the system enough that it essentially removes that pain completely allowing many more developers to take the plunge into a side project that they can potentially make a little cash with. Having revenue coming in keeps those developers going and we will see some great things come out of it.
That has huge potential! Unless an easier competitor comes along I do and will continue to use Stripe for anything that I'm not using for a primary source of income.
"I think you underestimate the disruptive potential that Stripe gives. Dealing with payments is one of the biggest pain points that a lot of people have when putting together a new web venture."
No offense but I think this statement shows exactly what makes Stripe so non-disruptive. Stripe has targeted a niche, not a vertical. Payment processing exists beyond the needs of new web ventures. The majority of businesses (brick and mortars) can't even make use of stripe without a VAR or OEM acting as a middle man, and at that point where is the value that stripe brings to the table? The savings will be eaten up by the middle man.
Stripe may be great for a small development shop cranking out mobile and web apps (I'm their target market, I'm considering using it for my SaaS myself) but once a business starts to scale saving a quarter or half percentage point on processing fees by using something like auth.net makes sense when weighed against the usability of stripe from a developer perspective.
The textbook method to disrupt a market is through disruptive innovation. This is serving the very low end of a market with a solution that is just good enough and then moving up market.
Sustaining innovation is when a company keeps improving a product and raising the prices. Stripe is more of a sustaining innovation than a disruptive one. Typically incumbents are the ones to improve their products while raising the price, but it is also possible for a new entrant to do the same. Providing a much better user experience could potentially lead to Stripe dominating the payments market but it is really just a less hassle version of what is in place today. Payments are a huge hassle to deal with as a merchant/developer so this is still an innovation but just not a disruptive one.
Dwolla is a better example of disruptive innovation in that they are circumventing the whole credit card system which could potentially save merchants and indirectly, consumers, large amounts of money.
Changing the basis of competition in the marketplace from price to convenience (i.e., ease of use) is exactly what disruptive innovation is. Not all disruptive innovations are low end.
Stripe is actually more like a new market disruption because it is bringing in non-consumers who might not have even been able to setup payment processing without their solution. The same is true of Gumroad, or Shopify.
That has huge potential! Unless an easier competitor comes along I do and will continue to use Stripe for anything that I'm not using for a primary source of income.