To grow your business, you will want to partner with a solid payment processor, especially if you want to offer your products online. In this regard, Stripe and PayPal are the industry forerunners when it comes to payment gateways and offers a multitude of excellent services to cater to your business needs. With each company owning a significant market share, quality of service is all but guaranteed. Therefore, considering the following differences can help you make the choice between PayPal or Stripe.It’s important to remember that, the exact choice will be influenced by the industry you are operating in, the type of products you are selling and the customers you are catering to. Let’s jump in.

Comparing QOL features between PayPal and Stripe

Disputes and Chargebacks – How heavy is the burden?

Chargeback fees are always a pain point, and so, the ease in which you can dispute claims and pay the minimum amount of fees plays a big role in your payment gateway decision.

On the PayPal end, chargebacks are covered under unauthorized transactions, complaints wherein the person does not receive the purchased item and fraudulent item descriptions. Once the chargeback is initiated, you are charged with a $20 chargeback fee and the amount is refunded to the customer. However, disputing the claim allows you to get a full refund on the fee.

Stripe has a similar approach but charges merchants a smaller $15 fee. In addition to this, Stripe provides merchants with better protection through the Stripe Radar features. With Radar, you get the following benefits:

• Using state of the art machine learning to predict and protect merchants from fraudulent transactions.
• Radar ensures that legitimate customers are not blocked through 3D Secure 2, fraudulent users do not waste your time.
• Radar adapts to your particular business needs and learns from your transactions to adopt best practices.

Availability – Will you be able to reach all your customers?

PayPal is available in well over 200 countries and supports 25 different currencies making it very easy to integrate into your business very quickly while also ensuring you have a wider customer reach as well. On the other hand, despite supporting more currencies, Stripe has a shorter reach and is only available in around 36 countries. Although there is a workaround through Stripe Atlas, with PayPal, you will be able to hit the ground running without worrying about reach.

Accepted Payments – Which cards are accepted?

PayPal has been in the game much longer, and it supports almost every major credit card out there, as well as PayPal Credit. On the other hand, Stripe supports every major debit card, credit card as well as virtual wallets like Checkout, Alipay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and in addition to the lucrative Visa Checkout and MasterPass by MasterCard.

Closing Remarks

Despite PayPal being in the game for a long time, Stripe has come a long way and has provided solid competition against PayPal. Without a doubt, Stripe and PayPal are the biggest stakeholders in the payment processing market. For the sake of convenience, for US-based businesses, Stripe is much easier, however, if you’re aiming for international customers PayPal is the way to go.