I'm 26 years old now and ever since I can remember, computers have been billed as "the next big thing" in the way that we will integrate it with our daily lives. And so it has too; computers are being used by more people, doing more different things than they did at any given stage in the past.

In the last couple of years, the internet has taken over that moniker from "computers". We've seen platforms like Facebook, Twitter & Foursquare that have managed to integrate itself into our daily lives and actually change some of our social behaviour. For just a minute, consider how much time you spent online and how much of that time actually applies to physical, real-world stuff that you're doing: communicating, shopping, doing business etc.

One thing that is changing at a rapid rate at the moment, is the attractiveness of the internet to the mainstream masses. Before some of the things that the early adopters were doing online, were considered too "geeky" for the Average Joe Public. It kinda felt like if you were working online in some way, then you'd be the only type of person interested in some of these products & services. But this perception has changed significantly, since new online(-based) ventures have started to disrupt traditional industries. 

Seeing Uber, the luxury, personalized car service, raise another $32m in funding reminded me of how many great new ideas are truly disruptingthe  traditional status quo for transportation. I'm then quickly reminded of Hipmunk, who has done the same for travel booking, and AirBnB, who have revolutionized accommodation. This is online in the wild.

I'm excited to see this trend continuing and see a few more traditional industries disrupted.

We've seen so many online industries being disrupted in the last couple of months (think AirBnB for accommodation & Hipmunk for traveling). In fact, I think "disruption" (using the current "trendy" definition) has become a business model in itself: just change things around completely within an industry, offer a superior product / service / experience and you're good to go.

The one industry that really needs some disruption badly is online payments. Sheesh, with more online businesses being started than ever before, I can't believe that something as completely shit as PayPal is still the #1 go-to for most of these startups. Payment processing is the lifeblood of these startups and yet we still have a variety of inadequate solutions available.

I think online payments fail for a couple of reasons (individually or in some cases, a combination of these):

• The best solutions are almost never available to anyone outside of the States. The startup economy is truly global now and there's no excuse why payment solutions haven't been democratized across the board.
• International and cross-country money transfers are still a mess, doesn't matter which service you use. Surely our politicians / reserve bank officials / economists / whoever can come up with something that's even 1% better.
• Customers don't just trust any payment processor and rightfully I don't think they should.
• Oh and did I mention PayPal, with its robotic support and complete inability to ever resolve a dispute fairly, is from the devil? I don't trust PayPal with more than $100 of my money. Ever.

I could probably go on, but these are the main reasons I see for the below-par experience with the solutions we have available at the moment.

With this at the back of my mind, I recently pulled the trigger on my first angel investment with InspirePay (where I'll also be an active advisor). The thing I liked about InspirePay was that they were actively trying to make things better and I especially think that there aim to democratize superior payment processing globally is fantastic (albeit ambitious).

Maybe it's just me... I'm from South Africa and as a result we've been excluded from using some of the better payment solutions out there. Maybe if we were based in the Valley I wouldn't have felt this way... What do you think? Got similarly frustrating experiences to share?