You would think that in the age we live in, that setting yourself up to take payments online would be easy. Really easy.
You’re dead wrong. It’s a nightmare. It’s an even bigger nightmare if you don’t live in a country with a developed banking system and third party payment processors.
The majority of new merchants do their research and eventually sign up with Paypal out of frustration of not being able to find a system that meets their needs.
If you really want to do something exciting online, get in to payment. Make it global, make it dead easy to transact and you’re onto a winner. Once you’ve jumped through many many hoops of course.
I have spent a lot of time working in banks, and the key constraint for anything in payments is national boundaries and domestic payment environments. The legislation and regulations are different everywhere, and so it's extremely difficult to setup anything global. The card systems are (almost) international and ubiquitous now, but it's important to remember that the main VISA/MC push took something like 15 years - even though most of the large banks globally were shareholders. My family had a trip to UK in 1979 and this was the first time any of us saw a VISA card - back then it had very limited acceptance and was only offered by a few banks. So I'd suggest it's best not to think about global too much ...
The other key point to highlight with electronic payments is fraud. Robert X. Cringely did an excellent interview in 2005 with Max Levchin, one of the co-founders of PayPal. He was asked "Is it possible for someone else to start another PayPal now ...?" and commented about one of the biggest challenges is to learn about fraud. "And the way you learn about fraud is you experience it, and you lose lots and lots of money ... PayPal has gone through at least $100m of learning experience."
Sounds like you have the inside scoop on this one. So what needs to be done? There are fraud mechanisms out there that can help, there's also the presence of all major credit brands. It looks like that the entities are there, just need someone like us to meld them into a product aimed for SME's, though a GCC product would be more suitable. There many current entrepreneurs and dormant ones in this region, why not make it easier for them to transact?