[password03]

It is a race to the bottom.

Payment processing has become so commoditised that you need huge scale.. see the Worldpay/Vantiv merger.

What Square and Stripe are doing is adding value and simplifying the complexities around payments. They will only be able to rinse small merchants with the high fees who need the equipment also (can't afford bespoke systems).

The larger tier one retailers get payments for near zero fees as they are literally just consuming the processing and they bring their own system/hardware/management.