Stripe stopped being competitive when they began keeping all of the transaction fees, including a percentage of the entire transaction, when issuing refunds. A customer changed their mind... well you just lost a lot of money.
Imagine you sold a product on the internet, you paid Fedex to ship it. Your customer decides they don't want your product anymore. You refund them their money, but then you have to refund them the shipping cost. Not just the cost to ship it to them, but they want you to handle the return for free. Yeah, that costs money. Transaction fees are not free. Stripe doesn't own the credit card network.
No that is incorrect. The credit card network returns most of the fees. They absolutely do not keep a percentage of the full amount. The credit card network might keep $0.3, but Stripe decided to keep the full 3-4%.
I agree but to be fair, that was always an expense to them. They just took it on the chin and used it as a competitive advantage/point of differentiation and it helped them grow. Especially makes sense as they initially targeted markets where software trials were being sold.