So, you want to start a payments company?

Like moths to a flame, that “heat” is perhaps why so many entrepreneurs are drawn to payments. Some of these innovators will build successful companies that blaze like wildfire, but my hunch is that many won’t make any money at all — simply smoldering and then fading to ashes.

Based on my experiences with Accept.com — one of the first P2P payments companies — which Amazon acquired in 1999, and PayNearMe, a company we’ve been building over the past five years, I wanted to share my thoughts about the current challenges and opportunities that payments entrepreneurs face.