With clones of Stripe poppin' up everywhere, I think the niche advantage would be to be able to scale the service to a number of other countries where this type of service is either expensive or unavailable (please come to Australia! - I know there is "pin", but we wouldn't mind a cheaper alternative without any monthly fees!)

Have you looked at Braintree? We're charging 2.4% and $0.30 in Australia, with no monthly fee.

We use Braintree, but it's a payment gateway in Australia not a full stack solution. You still need to provide your own merchant and account and deal with the endless hassles that come with it. Merchant accounts are really the hard part of accepting money in Australia at this point.

Does it work similar to PIN/PayPal where you hold the money then deposit the money into a bank account or do you require a merchant account?

We work with you to get you set up with a merchant account. Unfortunately, the application process isn't instant yet like it is in the US.

Paymill is one of the clones (the Samwer Brothers are behind it), they cover many European countries:

https://www.paymill.com

I was going to post the same thing.

Hope Stripe get there first, as I'd like to support them over Mastercard.