Stripe vs Braintree vs PayPal: Payment Platforms Comparison

Payment gateways make business so much easier to handle, especially when it is going global. Companies engaged in the retail industry need their payment systems and gateways to be most advanced, trusted, and effective. In case you’re looking for the best payment service for your business needs, consider the comparison of the most popular ones – Stripe, PayPal, and Braintree.

Brief Overview

Stripe

Stripe is a business-powering online payment platform. This service is based in the United States, and it allows individuals as well as companies of all sizes to make payments using their credit card along with other online payment methods. Stripe is a trusted platform and has UNICEF, Shopify, Amazon, Dribbble, and many other global companies among its regular clients.

PayPal

PayPal is one of the largest online payment gateways and one of the few that offers and supports peer-to-peer financial transactions. Because of this peculiarity, PayPal remains the most beloved payment gateway among P2P marketplaces, online shops, and auction platforms in many countries.

Braintree

Purchased in 2013, Braintree became a division of PayPal, which allowed their owners to cover a bigger market. The integration of the Braintree payment gateway allows business owners to streamline business operations by automating backend processes, increase sales by reaching more buyers in more regions around the world, etc.

Supported Payment Methods

All three payment services offer a wide range of payment methods, making them all attractive for business needs across the globe.

Stripe accepts the majority of US debit and credit cards, American Express, as well as Visa and Mastercard for international payments. Among the primary payment methods, Stripe also supports China’s AliPay, Apple Pay, Android Pay, ACH, etc. Until 2018, Stripe accepted Bitcoin, but today you will have to use another payment gateway for it.

PayPal also accepts major debit and credit cards, and the list is very similar to the Stripe’s one – Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Apple Pay, Android Pay, etc. Most important, PayPal began to accept Bitcoin, so it can be your alternative to Stripe that does not deal with Bitcoin anymore.

Braintree has a slightly different list of supported payment methods that include major credit cards, and, of course, PayPal and Venmo. Additionally, Braintree accepts Apple Pay, Android Pay, Union Pay, ACH, and Bitcoin.

Features

These three gateways have multiple features that are highly useful for every online store, marketplace, and other businesses with a commercial bank account.

Stripe offers such handy features as:

• Stripe Checkout for drop-in payments;


• Reporting tools;


• One-touch payments;


• Stripe Atlas for starting a global business;


• Marketplace toolkit;


• Customizable recurring billing;


• Instant deposit;


• Data migration assistance, etc.

PayPal can be proud of these features:

• Payflow gateway for ready merchant accounts;


• Recurring subscriptions and billing;


• One-touch payments;


• Invoicing API;


• Instant funds transfer;


• Starter pack for eCommerce businesses;


• Adaptive payments API, etc.

Braintree is a great payment service for its:

• Braintree Direct that serves as a payment gateway and a dedicated merchant account;


• Third-party merchant account support;


• Recurring billing;


• Marketplace toolkit;


• Data migration assistance;


• Integrated checkout, etc.

Pricing (Fees)

These payment gateways don’t have hidden costs, and their pricing is as transparent as it should be.

Stripe fees include:

2.9% + $0.30 per every successful card charge;

+1% for international cards that require a currency conversion.

As for additional fees, they are as follows:

0.08% per every successful card charge for using the ML-based adaptive acceptance functionality;

0.8% capped at $5.00 for getting payments with ACH credit, ACH direct debit, or wire transfers;

1% for instant payouts;

$0.25 for automatic updating renewed or expired card information (included in a custom package);

$0.03 for every 3D Secure authentication, which is an advanced authentication method used for customer’s identity verification prior to an online card purchase.

PayPal has several additional fees for the US and foreign clients:

3% charge for every currency conversion;

1.5% fee for receiving payments from other countries;

$0.30 per every uncaptured authorization;

2.7% per swiped and check-in transaction;

3.5% + $0.15 per every keyed or scanned transaction, etc.

Braintree offers standard and custom pricing packages. In addition to the standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, it has several additional ones:

1% per transaction in any non-USD currency;

1% for a customer’s card issued outside the US;

0.75% per ACH Direct Debit transaction;

$15 fee for each chargeback, etc.

Also, verified charitable organizations enjoy pricing:

2.2% + $0.30 per transaction for Mastercard, Visa, Discover, Diners Club, JCB, and digital wallets;

3.25% + $0.30 per each transaction for American Express cards.

Supported Countries and Currencies

Stripe solves payment processing needs of companies in 40 countries and regions:

Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Bulgaria Canada Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia

Finland France Germany Greece Hong Kong Hungary India Ireland Italy Japan

Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malaysia Malta Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Norway Poland

Portugal Romania Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States

Also, this payment gateway supports processing payments in more than 135 currencies, so businesses can charge customers in their native currency, which is highly convenient for the buyers.

PayPal has the biggest territory coverage, so individuals and companies in over 200 countries and regions (keep in mind that officially there are only 196 countries in the world) are free to enjoy using it. Even though PayPal has such global coverage, it supports only 26 currencies:

Currency	Code	Currency	Code
Australian dollar	AUD	Mexican peso	MXN
Brazilian real	BRL	New Taiwan dollar	TWD
Canadian dollar	CAD	New Zealand dollar	NZD
Chinese Renmenbi	CNY	Norwegian krone	NOK
Czech koruna	CZK	Philippine peso	PHP
Danish krone	DKK	Polish złoty	PLN
Euro	EUR	Pound sterling	GBP
Hong Kong dollar	HKD	Russian ruble	RUB
Hungarian forint	HUF	Singapore dollar	SGD
Indian rupee	INR	Swedish krona	SEK
Israeli new shekel	ILS	Swiss franc	CHF
Japanese yen	JPY	Thai baht	THB
Malaysian ringgit	MYR	United States dollar	USD

Braintree provides payment processing solutions for more than 46 countries and regions and supports over 130 currencies.

Andorra	France	Latvia	Portugal
Australia	Germany	Liechtenstein	Romania
Austria	Gibraltar	Lithuania	San Marino
Belgium	Greece	Luxembourg	Singapore
Bulgaria	Guernsey	Malaysia	Slovakia
Canada	Hong Kong	Malta	Slovenia
Croatia	Hungary	Monaco	Spain
Cyprus	Iceland	Netherlands	Sweden
Czech Republic	Ireland	New Zealand	Switzerland
Denmark	Isle of Man	Norway	United Kingdom
Estonia	Italy	Poland	United States
Finland	Jersey

Security

All payment services under comparison ensure the security of their clients’ payment transactions with encryption, tokenization, and other ways of protecting sensitive data.

Stripe has everything needed for secure development practices, including their own Stripe.js library. The logics are as follows – user credit data goes directly to this payment gateway secure vault instead of your servers. Such an approach protects you from data breaches as well as makes you PCI compliant.

PayPal offers storing user credit cards in their protected vault instead of your servers that are easier to hack for cybercriminals. To enhance your fraud protection, you can easily get PayPal’s anti-scamming toolkit for $10 per month plus $0.05 per transaction.

Braintree also has a fraud-protection functionality, and it includes anti-scam options from the AI-driven fraud protection service Kount and their own 3D Secure. The system allows you to customize your settings so the system will automatically decline specific transactions. Note that it has flaws in the shopping cart integrations compatibility.

Setup

These three payment gateways require different sets of programming skills.

Stripe has a wide range of supported programming languages that include Python, PHP, Go, Ruby, etc. If compare Stripe with PayPal and Braintree, it should be noted that it has the most extensive documentation and a software development kit than the others. Stripe has both official libraries and additional libraries and plugins for platforms like Joomla, WordPress, and others created by the community.

PayPal may be among the strongest payment services, but it offers weaker development and integration capabilities than Stripe and Braintree. While integrating the payment buttons by putting an HTML code fragment to your website is easy, integrating PayPal Pro and Express Checkout will require a certain level of technical expertise.

Braintree’s documentation is another proof that this gateway is developer-oriented. The Direct SDK supports multiple programming languages, including Python, PHP, Node.js, Java, Ruby, etc.

Support

Stripe is not a great service if you like to have your support and answers ASAP because it doesn’t provide live support, and all problem-solving communication is presented in the form of email communication. At the same time, Stripe has its IRC channel where people can get assistance from company representatives, real developers, and other users who faced similar problems.

PayPal has a very detailed help center where you can find answers to many of your problems. The customer service is available to users via email and by phone during the working hours (5 AM – 10 PM on Mon-Fri and 6 AM – 8 PM on Sat-Sun).

Braintree is claimed to have outstanding client support. This service provides users with a detailed FAQ section, guides, and support articles. The support managers are available 24/7 for email communication, and if you want to reach them by phone, you can do it during their working hours (8 AM – 7 PM on Mon-Thu and 8 AM – 5 PM on Friday).

Payment Gateways Comparison Table

The information presented in the table format is always more convenient and illustrative, so enjoy:

	Stripe	PayPal	Braintree
Coverage	40+ countries/regions	200+ countries/regions	46+ countries/regions
Currencies	135	26	130
Currency Conversion	+1%	+2.5%	+1%
Card Type	Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover, JCB, Diners Club	Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Eurocard, Maestro, Delta, Electron, debit cards with Mastercard or Visa logos	Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover, JCB, Diners Club, Maestro, Union Pay
Payment Methods	Apple Pay, Android Pay, AliPay, ACH	PayPal, Apple Pay, Android Pay, Bitcoin, Venmo	PayPal, Apple Pay, Android Pay, Bitcoin, Venmo, ACH
Supported Platforms	Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, Go, Node.js, iOS, Android	Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, Go, Node.js, iOS, Android	Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, Go, Node.js, iOS, Android
Transaction Fees	2.9% + $0.30	2.9% + $0.30	2.9%
Monthly Fees	$0	Standard: $0 Pro: $30	$0
International Payments	+1%	+1.5%	+1%
Chargebacks	$15 (free in case if the dispute was resolved in your favor)	$20	$15
Mobile Payments	Yes	Yes	Yes
Recurring Billing	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fraud Protection	Yes	Yes	Yes
PCI Compliance	Yes	Yes	Yes
Peer-to-Peer Payments	No	Yes	No

Payment Gateway Integration

In case you have a serious business platform or want to start it, you better keep in mind that all three payment gateways are better to be integrated into your system by the software development specialists who create or upgrade your platform. Payments and transactions are the exact aspect of business that must be handled by the professionals to leave no room for mistakes resulting in money loss, refunds, chargebacks, and so on.

Your platform doesn’t have to be directly related to eCommerce; it can be a charitable platform, a sports betting service, or any other system that can accept payments and requires recurring billing. So, if you’re looking for specialists who have expertise in payment services integration and creating complex platforms, you can rely on us to get the most efficient result!