Are There Risks of a VC Bubble for Payments Startups?

Does the flood of payments startups seemingly by everyone-and-their-mother indicate that a VC bubble might be in the offing?

The thought crossed my mind as I read a press release from CellCharge Inc. this morning about coming to market with version 2.0 of its mobile processing system. The short of it is that v2.0 is a Square knockoff for $9.99 a month. There are other such knockoffs.

And my thoughts of a bubble were reinforced after we got pinged via Twitter regarding Immediate Payments. Immediate Payments is a new product from VocaLink, a UK company, that enables “account to account” credit transfers in near real time, between participating banks. VocaLink offers this graphic outlining what Immediate Payments does:

It all smells of a land grab, and that is not directed at Immediate Payments or CellCharge specifically. Entrepreneurs see money floating from entity to entity and decide they want to own those transfers, or at least charge a toll for them. This could all get out of hand. All that’s needed is for one startup venture to head down a slippery path and do something stupid, like, say, fleece consumers. That’ll put all of payments in peril. For all I know, there’s a startup out there starting down that slippery path right now.