Some cold water: Square Wallet was discontinued 2 days after this article was published.
If that doesn’t convince you to take these puffy “payments revolution” pieces with a huge grain of salt I don’t know what will. They tend to be big on exciting futuristic hype and pretty poorly reasoned when it comes to actual analysis.
For example, it just blasts on through the “PayPal accepted at major retailer!” opening without even touching on whether there’s a reason for consumers to use it. Hint: not much. Credit cards offer rewards and don't require entering your phone number, plus have well established consumer protections.
We now know that Simple was incredibly overhyped. It wasn’t a revolutionary un-bank, it was a regular banking UI layer with maybe a couple more budgeting features and a more modern design. It was acquired by a bank -- not exactly a monopoly killer.
M-PESA is cool but it is not the “end of a monopoly”. It is a practical solution for an underserved market. The article even notes that fewer people even use banks in the first place. Ergo, not ending a monopoly.
Bitcoin, too early to tell what niches it may find (maybe international transfers). But none of its coverage AFAIK has made a compelling argument for why ordinary consumers would generally choose it over cards. Hard to see how that would break that monopoly.