PayPal Raising Merchant Fees

Just seeing the news that PayPal is raising their merchant fees, which I'll admit is pretty discouraging. My eTicketing platform, Qwitix, seeks to offer the lowest possible fees, and payment processing fees already represent over 2/3rds of the fees I charge. The announced changes, taking effect August 2, will mean PayPal takes closer to 90%. Admittedly, our dependence on PayPal is a risk we were always vulnerable to, but especially as a new, feature-lean service, lower prices was a key element of our value proposition.

The immediate resolution would be to switch to Stripe or Square, which still have online credit card processing for 2.9% + $0.30 per charge. My concern is that now that PayPal has made the first move up, will the other processors follow? PayPal doesn't appear to be fielding much blowback and the stock responded well to the news. They even tried to argue that their new scheme (2.59% + $0.49) will be cheaper, but that's only true above a breakeven price of about $62. My average transaction size is roughly half that.

I can certainly explore opportunities to change my own pricing and/or business model, so this by no means suggests the end of Qwitix. Most of my motivation for this post is to let other Hackers know this price hike is coming, and to encourage you all to examine your economics.

Best of luck!