Stripe: Price at 2.9% + 30c?

You are one of two co-founders of an early-stage payments infrastructure startup. You have a few hundred private-beta developers integrated, the product works, and you're about to make pricing public. Every competitor charges some combination of: setup fees ($500-2000), monthly minimums ($25-100), per-transaction rates (2.5-3.5%), per-transaction fixed fees ($0.20-0.50), and hidden line items (chargeback fees, currency conversion spreads, gateway fees).

Your developers tell you they hate dealing with payments providers more than any other infrastructure in their stack — every quote comes with sales calls, every contract has surprises, every monthly statement is undecipherable. Your competitive advantage so far has been a clean API and 4-line integration. You need to decide the pricing now, before launch.

The principle: Anchor pricing on the simplest number you can defend, and never optimize for short-term margin at the cost of long-term default- ness. Customers will eventually leave any vendor whose pricing feels predatory. Customers almost never leave a vendor whose pricing feels fair.