By: Senior staff writer – Easton Ellsworth

What ever happened to iKobo, the plucky PayPal competitor that offered users a debit card they could use to transfer or withdraw money in dozens of countries? The company has just emailed its users saying that it’s going to be shutting down immediately. Here’s our best guess as to why:

1. Too complicated. Sorry, but iKobo just never made its service dead simple, and now it’s going to be simply dead as a result. I tried iKobo several months ago and while I enjoyed the helpful how-to videos on the iKobo website, I just couldn’t quite get why I had to have a physical card in order to make the service work.

2. Not connected enough. If you had seen iKobo partnering left and right with the MySpaces and Facebooks and Bays and Skypes of the online world, surely it would have gained more traction.

3. It’s the economy, stupid. iKobo, like so many other online startups, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and wasn’t prepared well enough to weather the current global economic crisis.

While there may be other reasons for iKobo’s demise, these could account for most of its struggles.

Have you ever used iKobo? Why do you think this tech startup failed?