All tech companies are rising. It's similar to the dotcom boom in my opinion where all tech stocks went up and everyone thought they were stock picking geniuses. Don't attribute it to anything more than this.

All it takes is for a single payment provider to start dropping rates and it will follow. Right now there hasn't been one yet, because they're know it's mutually-assured destruction. But if someone can get a handle on fraud rates, they can cut the rates down to very thin margins and work off a volume.

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.