> considering Stripe has enormous negotiating leverage What negotiation are you referring to? Interchange pricing is fixed; they are not negotiating discounts

> considering Stripe has enormous negotiating leverage What negotiation are you referring to? Interchange pricing is fixed; they are not negotiating discounts on that. If you mean Stripe has VC funding to be a loss leader then, correct, but that’s not a moat. Moats are what protect profitable businesses. The resultant scale could be a moat but Stripe is still a small slice of the payment processing market. Their play here is to upsell premium services. Developer friendliness and moderate pricing (it’s actually not that low) are hooks to get in the door of startups.