In one of my experiences, a restaurant with an average transaction size of $80 catered a huge party around the holidays for which they charged $5,000. The processor thought it was too high compared to their average and froze the $5,000 in addition to all of their revenues going forward. They had to spend weeks trying to convince the processor that it was for a catering event. That meant humiliating themselves and getting their high paying customer involved in it. The customer had to submit affidavits to the business's card processor that confirmed they paid for a party and accepted the costs. Even then the processor didn't want to okay it. They told the business they wanted to cancel the charge altogether and the business was just going to have to deal with the customer paying them in cash. It was a nightmare.
Excellent post. Anyone who has had to deal with money men (particularly anyone who runs their own business) will have similar experiences to the above at some point. It seems to me that much of the consumer-side 'innovation' in traditional payment and banking systems involves disguising the enormous gorilla we all have on our backs from supporting this vast, inefficient and clumsy system. The benefits of Bitcoin are really very compelling if you ignore the meagre perks banks give us (and the BTC volatility..)