(Throwaway since I know a lot of the Stripe folks.)
Agreed -- I'm disappointed to see this from pc. This piece reeks of the "Andy Grove Fallacy", as described by to Derek Lowe ([1] and [2]).
It's one thing to be a mastercard middleman -- it's completely different to create new fundamental knowledge about the world.
[1] "Andy Grove: Rich, Famous, Smart and Wrong" http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/and...
[2] "Silicon Valley Sunglasses" http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/04/02/sil...