Financial infrastructure to grow your revenue.
Grade: A — Score: 95/100
Stripe's technology is designed to support a wide range of payment methods and currencies, ensuring businesses can operate globally with ease. With a proven track record of processing over $1.4 trillion in payments volume in 2024 and maintaining a 99.999% uptime, Stripe is a reliable choice for businesses of all sizes.
The platform offers flexible workflows that allow businesses to adapt their payment processes to meet specific needs. Whether it's through embedded payments, billing models, or card issuing programs, Stripe provides the tools necessary for businesses to optimize their revenue streams.
Managing risks is crucial in today's regulatory environment, and Stripe equips businesses with tools for compliance, fraud prevention, and account security. This ensures that companies can focus on growth while Stripe handles the complexities of financial regulations.
Standard: 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction (domestic cards)
Custom: Contact sales
Consider switching to PayPal: PayPal offers a similar suite of payment processing services with a strong brand presence and user base.
Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ per domestic card transaction versus PayPal's 3.49% + 49¢ for online payments. The gap widens for international sales: Stripe adds 1.5% for cross-border cards and 1% for currency conversion, while PayPal charges 4.5% plus a fixed fee for international transactions. Stripe offers deeper developer customization through its API and Elements components, while PayPal provides stronger consumer brand recognition with over 400 million active accounts. For subscription billing, Stripe Billing is included natively (0.7% pay-as-you-go or from $620/month annual), whereas PayPal requires PayPal Pro at $30/month for advanced recurring payment features.
Stripe supports over 100 payment methods across 195 countries and 135+ currencies. This includes major credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover), digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Cash App Pay), Buy Now Pay Later (Klarna at 5.99% + 30¢), ACH Direct Debit (0.8%, $5 cap), bank transfers, and stablecoins (1.5% of transaction amount). For in-person payments, Stripe Terminal accepts cards and contactless wallets at 2.7% + 5¢ per domestic transaction.
For online payments, Stripe adds 1.5% on top of the standard 2.9% + 30¢ fee when a customer uses a card issued outside the US, bringing the total to 4.4% + 30¢. If currency conversion is also required, an additional 1% applies, making it 5.4% + 30¢ in total. For in-person Terminal transactions, the international surcharge is also +1.5%. Businesses processing high international volume can contact Stripe for custom IC+ pricing with country-specific rates.
Stripe Billing manages over 200 million active subscriptions and supports recurring, usage-based, metered, and one-time billing models. Pricing is either 0.7% of Billing volume (pay-as-you-go, no monthly fee) or starting at $620/month on a 1-year contract with volume tiers. Features include Smart Retries for failed payment recovery, automatic proration for plan changes, free trial and coupon management, and dunning automation. Stripe acquired the usage-based billing platform Metronome in December 2025 to further expand metered billing capabilities.
Stripe Radar uses machine learning trained on billions of data points from the Stripe network to detect and block fraudulent transactions. Basic Radar is included at no extra cost for all accounts on standard pricing. Radar for Fraud Teams adds custom rules, manual review queues, and risk scoring at $0.02 per screened transaction (standard pricing) or $0.07 (custom pricing), with a 30-day free trial. Stripe also integrates with Verifi (Visa) and Ethoca (Mastercard) for dispute prevention, with lookups included and resolution fees of $15 (Visa CE 3.0) or $29 (Mastercard) per case.
Stripe Terminal processes in-person card and wallet payments at 2.7% + 5¢ per domestic transaction. Hardware options include the Stripe Reader M2 at $59, and the S710 and S700 readers at $299 each, with optional cellular connectivity at $10/reader/month. Tap to Pay adds $0.10 per authorization. Terminal integrates with hundreds of third-party POS systems and unifies in-person data with online payment data in the same Stripe Dashboard, which is useful for omnichannel businesses like Hertz (11,000+ locations) and URBN ($5 billion in combined revenue on Stripe).
Yes. Stripe Issuing creates and manages virtual and physical cards at $0.10 per virtual card and $3.50 per standard physical card, with custom branded cards subject to additional fees. Issued cards include spending controls, real-time authorization rules, and dispute handling at $15 per dispute. Cross-border card payments to issued cards cost 1% + 30¢, with an additional 1% if currency conversion is required. Platforms using Issuing earn a share of interchange revenue on every transaction.
Yes. Stripe ships the Agent Toolkit, an open-source SDK with native integrations for OpenAI, LangChain, and CrewAI that lets AI agents create payment links, issue invoices, and charge cards programmatically. Stripe also co-developed the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) with OpenAI, which standardizes how agents complete purchases across platforms. For businesses that want to offload global tax and compliance when selling to agents worldwide, Managed Payments operates as merchant of record at a 3.5% surcharge on top of base fees in 75+ countries.
Stripe Capital provides business loans based on processing history, with no credit checks and repayment as a percentage of daily sales. Stripe Financial Accounts offers business banking with no storage fees or minimums, free ACH funding, wire transfers at $2 each, and instant currency conversion starting at 0.5%. Cards issued from Financial Accounts carry no cross-border or FX fees. For sending money out, Global Payouts reaches recipients in 50+ countries at $1.50 per payout plus cross-border fees starting at 0.25% and FX fees starting at 0.5%.
Stripe Tax automates tax calculation, collection, and filing in 100+ countries. Two plans are available: Tax Complete (starting at $90/month on a 1-year contract) includes threshold monitoring, registrations, calculations, and filings in 90+ countries. Tax Basic is transaction-based at 0.5% per transaction (no-code) or $0.50 per transaction (API). Stripe Tax monitors when you hit registration thresholds in new jurisdictions and sends alerts. The product is fully integrated with Stripe Payments, Billing, and Invoicing, so tax is calculated at checkout without additional integration work.
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