I appreciate you looking out for my well being, but really there was nothing shady here. We weren’t forced out by a Visa mob or something like that. I actually wish that were the case, because that would mean that we were growing! We just aren’t well connected enough to convince established merchants to switch over to a startup’s payment network, especially since the value to them is dubious.

But it’s not like there was some shadowy Visa conspiracy. We received pre seed investment from institutional investors and built a pay-by-bank network entirely fine without anybody stopping us

> We just aren’t well connected enough to convince established merchants to switch over to a startup’s payment network, especially since the value to them is dubious.

So instead of competing on merit by improving the value offered to merchants, your concern is to become connected enough to have the merchants switch to you in spite of "dubious value"??

Thanks for the clarification in your particular case. No offence, but you were then probably not big enough to matter. There is plenty evidence of shadowy forces shutting down payment systems, however, just look at Marc Andreessen's public statements about crypto founders he invested in getting debanked.